IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/scotjp/v65y2018i3p248-270.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Polarization of life expectancy across countries: Does biological and cultural distance to the health technological frontier matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Wen‐Shuenn Deng
  • Yi‐Chen Lin
  • Ming‐Tien Tsai

Abstract

This study examines the evolution of the distribution of life expectancy (LE) at birth and at ages 20 and 60 years using the stochastic kernel framework. It finds that the period between 1990 and 2013 exhibits a decrease in LE at birth dispersion and also shows that σ‐divergence and polarization of LE at ages 20 and 60 occur across countries. Further deterioration (improvement) in relative position of countries with low (high) starting LE is observed in some sections of the LE distribution. The dispersion in LE and intradistribution movements can be attributed to genealogically transmitted human barriers to technology diffusion.

Suggested Citation

  • Wen‐Shuenn Deng & Yi‐Chen Lin & Ming‐Tien Tsai, 2018. "Polarization of life expectancy across countries: Does biological and cultural distance to the health technological frontier matter?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 65(3), pages 248-270, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:65:y:2018:i:3:p:248-270
    DOI: 10.1111/sjpe.12167
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/sjpe.12167
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/sjpe.12167?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sebastian Vollmer & Hajo Holzmann & Florian Ketterer & Stephan Klasen & David Canning, 2013. "The Emergence of Three Human Development Clubs," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-7, March.
    2. Enrico Spolaore & Romain Wacziarg, 2016. "War and Relatedness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(5), pages 925-939, December.
    3. Enrico Spolaore & Romain Wacziarg, 2009. "The Diffusion of Development," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(2), pages 469-529.
    4. Angus Deaton, 2004. "Health in an Age of Globalization," NBER Working Papers 10669, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. David Canning, 2012. "Progress in Health around the World," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(12), pages 1784-1798, December.
    6. Oded Galor & Ömer Özak, 2016. "The Agricultural Origins of Time Preference," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(10), pages 3064-3103, October.
    7. Diego Comin & William Easterly & Erick Gong, 2010. "Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 BC?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 65-97, July.
    8. Hansen, Casper Worm, 2013. "The diffusion of health technologies: Cultural and biological divergence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 21-34.
    9. David Cutler & Angus Deaton & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2006. "The Determinants of Mortality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(3), pages 97-120, Summer.
    10. Costas Megir & Danny Quah, 1996. "Regional Convergence Clusters Across Europe," CEP Discussion Papers dp0274, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    11. Oleg Badunenko & Daniel Henderson & R. Russell, 2013. "Polarization of the worldwide distribution of productivity," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 153-171, October.
    12. Phu Nguyen Van, 2005. "Distribution Dynamics of CO 2 Emissions," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 32(4), pages 495-508, December.
    13. Olivier Peron & Serge Rey, 2012. "Trade and convergence of per capita income in the Indian Ocean Zone, 1950–2008," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 49(3), pages 657-683, December.
    14. Philippe Aghion & Peter Howitt & Fabrice Murtin, 2011. "The Relationship Between Health and Growth: When Lucas Meets Nelson-Phelps," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 2(1).
    15. Johnson, Paul A., 2005. "A continuous state space approach to "Convergence by Parts"," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 317-321, March.
    16. Ram, Rati, 2006. "State of the "life span revolution" between 1980 and 2000," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 518-526, August.
    17. Quah, Danny, 1996. "Regional Convergence Clusters Across Europe," CEPR Discussion Papers 1286, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Bandyopadhyay, Sanghamitra, 2012. "Convergence clubs in incomes across Indian states: Is there evidence of a neighbours’ effect?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(3), pages 565-570.
    19. Bianchi, Marco, 1997. "Testing for Convergence: Evidence from Non-parametric Multimodality Tests," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(4), pages 393-409, July-Aug..
    20. Quah, Danny T., 1996. "Regional convergence clusters across Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 951-958, April.
    21. Silvia Dal Bianco, 2016. "Going clubbing in the eighties: convergence in manufacturing sectors at a glance," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 623-659, March.
    22. Quah, Danny, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," CEPR Discussion Papers 1586, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    23. Andersen, Thomas Barnebeck & Dalgaard, Carl-Johan & Skovsgaard, Christian Volmar & Selaya, Pablo, 2016. "Historical Migration Flows and Global Health Differences," DaCHE discussion papers 2016:1, University of Southern Denmark, Dache - Danish Centre for Health Economics.
    24. Bashtannyk, David M. & Hyndman, Rob J., 2001. "Bandwidth selection for kernel conditional density estimation," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 279-298, May.
    25. Danny Quah, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution," CEP Discussion Papers dp0324, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    26. Giovanni Caggiano & Leone Leonida, 2013. "Multimodality in the distribution of GDP and the absolute convergence hypothesis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 1203-1215, June.
    27. Quah, Danny T, 1997. "Empirics for Growth and Distribution: Stratification, Polarization, and Convergence Clubs," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 27-59, March.
    28. Eaton, Jonathan & Kortum, Samuel, 1999. "International Technology Diffusion: Theory and Measurement," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 40(3), pages 537-570, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lin, Yi-Chen & Deng, Wen-Shuenn, 2018. "Are per capita international tourist arrivals converging?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 274-290.
    2. Lin, Yi-Chen, 2016. "The global distribution of the burden of road traffic injuries: Evolution and intra-distribution mobility," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 77-91.
    3. Breinlich, Holger & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. & Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2014. "Regional Growth and Regional Decline," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 4, pages 683-779, Elsevier.
    4. Leone Leonida & Leone Leonida & Daniel Montolio, 2003. "Public Capital, Growth and Convergence in Spain. A Counterfactual Density Estimation Approach," Working Papers 2003/3, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    5. Cheong, Tsun Se & Wu, Yanrui, 2018. "Convergence and transitional dynamics of China's industrial output: A county-level study using a new framework of distribution dynamics analysis," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 125-138.
    6. Tsionas, Mike G., 2019. "Transition and limiting distributions when covariates are available," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 1-1.
    7. Azomahou, Théophile T. & El ouardighi, Jalal & Nguyen-Van, Phu & Pham, Thi Kim Cuong, 2011. "Testing convergence of European regions: A semiparametric approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 1202-1210, May.
    8. Kounetas, Konstantinos & Zervopoulos, Panagiotis D., 2019. "A cross-country evaluation of environmental performance: Is there a convergence-divergence pattern in technology gaps?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 273(3), pages 1136-1148.
    9. Adolfo Maza & José Villaverde & María Hierro, 2015. "Non- $$\hbox {CO}_2$$ CO 2 Generating Energy Shares in the World: Cross-Country Differences and Polarization," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 61(3), pages 319-343, July.
    10. Eckey, Hans-Friedrich & Türck, Matthias, 2005. "Convergence of EU-regions: A literature report," Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 80, University of Kassel, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    11. Leone Leonida & Leone Leonida & Daniel Montolio, 2003. "Public Capital, Growth and Convergence in Spain. A Counterfactual Density Estimation Approach," Working Papers 2003/3, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    12. Roberto Ezcurra & Carlos Gil & Pedro Pascual & Manuel Rapun, 2005. "Inequality, Polarisation and Regional Mobility in the European Union," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(7), pages 1057-1076, June.
    13. Kounetas, Konstantinos E. & Polemis, Michael L. & Tzeremes, Nickolaos G., 2021. "Measurement of eco-efficiency and convergence: Evidence from a non-parametric frontier analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 291(1), pages 365-378.
    14. Li, Kui-Wai & Zhou, Xianbo & Pan, Zhewen, 2016. "Cross-country output convergence and growth: Evidence from varying coefficient nonparametric method," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 32-41.
    15. Roberto Zelli & Maria Grazia Pittau, 2006. "Empirical evidence of income dynamics across EU regions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(5), pages 605-628.
    16. Enrique Lopez-Bazo & Tomas Del Barrio & Manuel Artis, 2005. "Geographical distribution of unemployment in Spain," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 305-318.
    17. Arribas, Iván & Pérez, Francisco & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2008. "On the Dynamics of Globalization," MPRA Paper 16007, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2008.
    18. Maza, Adolfo & Hierro, María & Villaverde, José, 2012. "Income distribution dynamics across European regions: Re-examining the role of space," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 2632-2640.
    19. Barrios, Salvador & Strobl, Eric, 2009. "The dynamics of regional inequalities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 575-591, September.
    20. Inmaculada Garcia-Mainar & Victor Montuenga-Gomez, 2003. "The Spanish Wage Curve: 1994-1996," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(9), pages 929-945.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:65:y:2018:i:3:p:248-270. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sesssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.