Watch the relationship between GDP/capita and Life Expectancy evolve over time: Gapminder World.
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Tags: GDP, Life Expectancy
Soares (2009) examines the relationship between income and life expectancy around the world and particularly with respect to Latin America. Table 1 shows GDP growth per capita and life expectancy increases around the world. Table 2 decomposes the gains in life expectancy by age group. Some notable findings are:
- We see significant progress in East Asia. East Asia had the largest increase in income (330%) and life expectancy (49%) between 1960 and 2000.
- Sub-Saharan Africa is still lagging behind other regions. Income in 2000 was only 10% higher in Sub-Saharan Africa than was the case in 1960. Further, life expectancy increased by only 15% from 1960 to 2000, from 41 years to 47 years.
- Within Latin America, Haiti was the poorest country in 1960.
- Both Bolivia and Haiti had a life expectancy of 43 years in 1960. By 2000, however, Bolivian life expectancy increased to 63 years whereas for Haiti life expectancy increased to only 53 years over this time period.
- Barbados is the richest Latin American country. Argentina is the richest large Latin American economy.
- Nicaraguan income per capita decreased by 48% between 1960 and 2000.
- Overall life expectancy increased in Latin American increased by 23%.
- In Latin America, 58% of the increase in life expectancy is due to decreased mortality among individuals aged 0-19 years.
What is the cause of the increased longevity across Latin America between 1960 and 2000. Soares claims the following:
“The available evidence suggests that improvements in public health infrastructure – such as provision of treated water and sewerage services – and large-scale immunization programs may have been the key factors behind the mortality reductions observed in the period.”
- Rodrigo R. Soares (2009) “Life expectancy and welfare in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Health Economics, Volume 18 Issue S1, Pages S37 – S54.
Tags: Life Expectancy
- “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men. Gang aft agley” – Robert Burns
The only certainty in life is uncertainty. Individuals make plans for their future without knowing how long they will live in reality. Retirement planning, for instance, is very difficult due to uncertain life expectancy. Would you be willing to trade some of your life expectancy in order to be more certain of the date you will perish?
This is the question Ryan Edwards attempts to answer in his 2008 NBER working paper. Countries such as the U.S. and France have a relatively high variance of life expectancy while Sweden and Japan have very low levels of life expectancy variance.
He calculates that “one less year in standard deviation is worth about half a mean life year.” Further, “health inequality must be larger between rich and poor countries than is implied by life expectancy alone, since life-span uncertainty is surely higher in developing countries.”
- Edwards, Ryan (2008) “The Cost of Uncertain Life Span” NBER WP #14093.
Tags: Life Expectancy, Risk Aversion
Economists predict that longer life expectancy leads to more investment in education. For those who live a short time, sacrificing working years for education is not worthwhile if the payback period is short. For those with a longer life expectancy, an individual can reap the monetary rewards from education over a longer period of time.
An NBER working paper by Seema Jayachandran looks at a what happens to educational investment after there was a 70% reduction in maternal mortality risk in Sri Lanka. The decreased maternal mortality rate was due to a number of factors: an increase in the number of hospitals, clinics and health centers, an increase in the number of trained birth attendants, transportation improvements such as free ambulances, and increased adoption of western technologies such as sulfa drugs and penicillin. Further, there was significant success in eradicating malaria during this time. Also, most of the medical services were provided for free.
Jayachandran uses a difference-in-difference-in-difference (DDD) strategy. “The first difference is over time, since maternal mortality fell between 1946 and 1953. The second difference is across geographic areas; the magnitude of the MMR declines varied considerably across Sri Lanka’s 19 districts. The third difference is between genders; maternal mortality is quite unique among major causes of death in that it exclusively pertains to women.”
The results of the study are that the decline in “…maternal mortality risk over the sample period increased female life expectancy at age 15 by 4.1%, female literacy by 2.5%, and female years of education by 4.0%.”
- Seema Jayachandran (2008) “Life Expectancy and Human Capital Investments: Evidence From Maternal Mortality Declines” NBER WP #13947.
Tags: Education, Life Expectancy, Literacy
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