The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, finds that five-yearly screening would work best.
Doctors in this country are still undecided whether the money spent setting up and running an organised bowel cancer screening programme would save more lives if invested in other areas, such as developing new drugs.
However, when the US researchers, from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, weighed the costs of screening against the costs of late detection and the extra treatment patients would need.
In addition, the extra contribution to the economy of patients whose cancer was cured due to early detection was also assessed.
Embarassing
The researchers found that a once-only screening session at age 55 with colonoscopy - in which a probe is used to examine the bowel - yielded a fall of between 30% and 50% in mortality from colorectal cancer, depending on the percentage of men prepared to take part.
Another method suggested for bowel screening is for a patient to provide a stool sample once every five years above age 50, with an examination of their lower colon with a smaller probe.
Anyone whose examination revealed polyps - which can turn into cancers - would get a more detailed probe.
Using this scenario, the researchers predicted a fall in mortality of as much as 80% - with every extra year of life saved worth $92,900.
One of the main obstacles to successful bowel screening is how prepared people are to undergo it, as both sigmoidoscopy and colonoscopy are embarassing and may be uncomfortable.
The researchers suggest: "Given the low proportion of Americans who currently comply with the recommended screening schedule, advising all Americans to be screened at least once may be a reasonable starting point for national policy."
In the UK, there are approximately 20,000 new cases of bowel cancer diagnosed every year. Four out of ten patients are alive five years later.