The changing health convergence for life expectancy and spatial interactions

ABSTRACT

Spatial interactions are important to consider issues like health convergence between the European Union countries and Spanish provinces. Health status is measured by a combination of objective health outcome indicators, such as life expectancy: at birth, at age 65, disability-adjusted life expectancy and healthy life expectancy based on self-perceived health. The period analysed differs from one indicator to another considering 1998–2018. There are two forms of convergence: σ-convergence and absolute β-convergence. Furthermore, the Moran Test is performed to disentangle the degree of spatial dependencies and two models of spatial regression are used to include these dependencies in the absolute β-convergence estimation. Our findings suggest that there is a convergence process among European Union countries and the Spanish provinces. On the other hand, β-convergence is higher in women among European countries and in men for Spanish provinces. Nevertheless, the rise of the dispersion means that there is not clear evidence about trends in the period considered. There are two contributions in our research: to achieve an updated vision of health convergence and to incorporate spatial econometrics in Health Economics research. These insights can help to reduce health inequalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Spatial Health Econometrics
• convergence
• life expectancy
• European Union
• Spain

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I14
• I15
• C33
• C11

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author’s contributions

The first author performed the analysis and datasets insights. All the authors were involved in designed the study and participated in the writing the manuscript.

Data availability statement for basic data sharing policy

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study available from 4 different databases: World Bank Open Data, World Health Organization database, Eurostat and Spanish National Statistics Institute. It should be noted that the source of the European spatial data is Eurostat and for Spanish data is GADM maps and data 2020 website at https://gadm.org/. The interpretation and reporting of these data are the sole responsibilities of the authors.

Additional information

Funding

No financial support was provided for the completion of this study.