How do economic, health, environmental and demographic factors affect life expectancy? – a novel attempt for developed and developing economies

ABSTRACT

Policies throughout the world are presently focused on achieving a better quality of life and a longer life span through increased financial feasibility, ecological harmony, and economic stability. This effort seeks to empirically assess the impact of economic, health, environmental, and demographic factors on life expectancy in 36 high-income and 65 middle-income nations from 2000 to 2019. Using panels corrected standard errors (PCSEs) regression, this paper assures that high-income nations have significantly longer lifespans. The factors that lead most to this strengthening include GDP per capita, population growth, financial development, food production, and fertility rates. However, high-income countries tend to have shorter life expectancy due to rising mortality rates and carbon dioxide emissions. In middle-income nations, life expectancy falls significantly as a result of rising food production, health expenses, fertility rates, and economic hardship. Still, improving lifespan in middle-income nations is a result of multiple factors, including rising rates of GDP per capita, financial development, inequality in earnings between rural and urban places, and growing populations. The accuracy and credibility of the results are confirmed by using Driscoll-Kraay standard error estimates, feasible generalized least squares, random effect, and fixed effect approaches. The study’s results point to the notion that these countries should put more emphasis on demographic and economic factors that lengthen life expectancy. Further, as health and environmental issues contribute to a shorter life expectancy, governments should place a greater priority on these fields.

KEYWORDS:

• Life expectancy
• economic misery
• financial development
• CO₂ emissions PCSEs

Disclosure statement

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

Acronyms

LE	=	Life expectancy
EM	=	Economic Misery
GDPPC	=	GDP Per Capita
Fin	=	Financial Development
Food	=	Food production
Rueq	=	Rural- Urban income inequality
Health	=	Health Expenditure
Pop	=	Population
Mor	=	Mortality Rate
Fer	=	Fertility rate
HT	=	Harris and Tzavalis
IPS	=	Im – Pesaran – Shin
CO2	=	Carbon Dioxide Emissions
PCSEs	=	Panel corrected standard errors
FE	=	Fixed effect
RE	=	Random effect
FGLS	=	Feasible generalized least squares
DKSE	=	Driscoll-Kraay standard error
2SLS	=	Two Stage Least Squares
GMM	=	Generalized Method of Moments
LLC	=	Levin-Lin-Chu
CADF	=	Cross-sectionally Augmented Dickey – Fuller
WDI	=	World development indicator
VIF	=	Variance inflation factor

Availability of data

Data is readily available at request from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

There was no specific financial support provided for this study.