IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ris/ecoint/0852.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Life Expectancy and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Southern African Development Community

Author

Listed:
  • Biyase, Mduduzi

    (School of Economics, University of Johannesburg, South Africa)

  • Malesa, Mokgadi

    (School of Economics, University of Johannesburg, South Africa)

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to examine the association between life expectancy and economic growth in a sample of 10 Southern African Development Community members for the period 1985-2017. To account for unobserved country-level heterogeneity we employ the fixed effect estimator. We also use fixed effects two-stage least squares (FE-2SLS) estimator to account for a possible endogeneity bias due to reverse causation between life expectancy and economic growth. Using the fixed effect we find that life expectancy, democracy, and population have the expected positive impact on economic growth. The results are robust to addressing the potential reverse causality between life expectancy and economic growth, controlling for additional variables (such as inflation, trade openness, and government expenditure), and altering the sample of countries (i.e. excluding South Africa from the sample) in the estimation. The estimates from this paper suggest that improving health conditions in the Southern African Development Community can be effective and should continue to be a major focus of policy makers in this region and other developing regions. Aspettativa di vita e crescita economica: evidenze dalla Comunità per lo Sviluppo dell’Africa del Sud La finalità di questo studio è quella di esaminare la relazione tra aspettativa di vita e crescita economica su un campione di 10 paesi della Comunità per lo sviluppo dell’Africa del Sud nel periodo 1985-2017. Si applica la stima a effetto fisso per tenere conto dell’eterogeneità tra i paesi. Si utilizza anche la stima a effetto fisso quadratica minima su due livelli (FE-2SLS) per tenere conto di una possibile tendenza endogena causata dalla relazione inversa tra aspettativa di vita e crescita economica. Utilizzando questo tipo di stima si riscontra che aspettativa di vita, democrazia e popolazione esercitano sulla crescita l’atteso impatto positivo. I risultati sono robusti rispetto ad una possibile relazione inversa di causalità tra aspettativa di vita e crescita economica, tenendo sotto controllo altre variabili (per es. inflazione, apertura commerciale, debito pubblico) e variando i paesi del campione (per es. escludendo il Sud Africa) nelle stime. I risultati evidenziati in questo studio suggeriscono che il miglioramento delle condizioni sanitarie nella Comunità per lo sviluppo dell’Africa del Sud può essere efficace e dovrebbe continuare ad essere l’obiettivo dei governi di questa regione e di altre in via di sviluppo.

Suggested Citation

  • Biyase, Mduduzi & Malesa, Mokgadi, 2019. "Life Expectancy and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Southern African Development Community," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 72(3), pages 351-366.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:ecoint:0852
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iei1946.it/upload/rivista_articoli/allegati/283_biyasemalekaricfinalx.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matteo Cervellati & Uwe Sunde, 2011. "Life expectancy and economic growth: the role of the demographic transition," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 99-133, June.
    2. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson, 2007. "Disease and Development: The Effect of Life Expectancy on Economic Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(6), pages 925-985, December.
    3. Howitt, Peter & Mayer-Foulkes, David, 2005. "R&D, Implementation, and Stagnation: A Schumpeterian Theory of Convergence Clubs," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(1), pages 147-177, February.
    4. Sachs, Jeffrey D & Warner, Andrew M, 1997. "Sources of Slow Growth in African Economies," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 6(3), pages 335-376, October.
    5. Rajesh Sharma, 2018. "Health and economic growth: Evidence from dynamic panel data of 143 years," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(10), pages 1-20, October.
    6. Naeem Akram & Ihtsham ul Haq Padda & Mohammad Khan, 2008. "The Long Term Impact of Health on Economic Growth in Pakistan," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 47(4), pages 487-500.
    7. David E. Bloom & Jeffrey D. Sachs, 1998. "Geography, Demography, and Economic Growth in Africa," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(2), pages 207-296.
    8. Malefane, Malefa R & Odhiambo, Nicholas M, 2018. "Trade openness and economic growth: empirical evidence from Lesotho," Working Papers 23787, University of South Africa, Department of Economics.
    9. MALEFANE , Malefa Rose & ODHIAMBO, Nicholas M., 2018. "Impact of Trade Openness on Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from South Africa," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 71(4), pages 387-416.
    10. Bloom, David E. & Canning, David & Sevilla, Jaypee, 2004. "The Effect of Health on Economic Growth: A Production Function Approach," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 1-13, January.
    11. Quamrul H. Ashraf & Ashley Lester & David N. Weil, 2009. "When Does Improving Health Raise GDP?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2008, Volume 23, pages 157-204, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Gauri Kartini Shastry & David N. Weil, 2003. "How Much of Cross-Country Income Variation is Explained By Health?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(2-3), pages 387-396, 04/05.
    13. Albert J.F. Yang & William N. Trumbull & Chin Wei Yang & Bwo‐Nung Huang, 2011. "On The Relationship Between Military Expenditure, Threat, And Economic Growth: A Nonlinear Approach," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 449-457, April.
    14. Casper Worm Hansen & Lars Lønstrup, 2015. "The Rise in Life Expectancy and Economic Growth in the 20th Century," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(584), pages 838-852, May.
    15. David Bloom & David Canning, 2003. "The Health and Poverty of Nations: From theory to practice," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 47-71.
    16. Hansen, Casper Worm, 2013. "Life expectancy and human capital: Evidence from the international epidemiological transition," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1142-1152.
    17. John Luke Gallup & Jeffrey D. Sachs, 2000. "Agriculture, Climate, and Technology: Why are the Tropics Falling Behind?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 82(3), pages 731-737.
    18. JP Dunne & E Nikolaidou & R Smith, 2002. "Military Spending, Investment And Economic Growth In Small Industrialising Economies," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 70(5), pages 789-790, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Zhaohua & Asghar, Muhammad Mansoor & Zaidi, Syed Anees Haider & Nawaz, Kishwar & Wang, Bo & Zhao, Wehui & Xu, Fengxing, 2020. "The dynamic relationship between economic growth and life expectancy: Contradictory role of energy consumption and financial development in Pakistan," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 257-266.
    2. Aqsa Mehmood & Hafiz Muhammad Abubakar Siddique & Amjad Ali, 2022. "Impact Of Health On Worker Productivity: Evidence From South Asia," Bulletin of Business and Economics (BBE), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 11(2), pages 1-8, June.
    3. Prempeh Kwadwo Boateng & Frimpong Joseph Magnus & Yeboah Samuel Asuamah, 2024. "The dynamics of financial development, environmental degradation, economic growth and population health in the Economic Community of West African States," Environmental & Socio-economic Studies, Sciendo, vol. 12(2), pages 13-27.
    4. Saffiah Mohd Nor & Zahariah Sahudin & Geetha Subramaniam, 2023. "The Effects of Health, Labor and Capital towards Labor Productivity in Manufacturing Industries," Information Management and Business Review, AMH International, vol. 15(1), pages 121-130.
    5. Ernie Hendrawaty & Mohd Shahidan Shaari & Fajrin Satria Dwi Kesumah & Abdul Rahim Ridzuan, 2022. "Economic Growth, Financial Development, Energy Consumption and Life Expectancy: Fresh Evidence from ASEAN countries," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 12(2), pages 444-448, March.
    6. Husam Rjoub & Jamiu Adetola Odugbesan & Tomiwa Sunday Adebayo & Wing-Keung Wong, 2021. "Investigating the Causal Relationships among Carbon Emissions, Economic Growth, and Life Expectancy in Turkey: Evidence from Time and Frequency Domain Causality Techniques," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-20, March.

    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. Bloom, David E. & Canning, David & Kotschy, Rainer & Prettner, Klaus & Schünemann, Johannes, 2024. "Health and economic growth: Reconciling the micro and macro evidence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    2. Belgi Turan, 2020. "Life expectancy and economic development: Evidence from microdata," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 949-972, August.
    3. David E. Bloom & Michael Kuhn & Klaus Prettner, 2022. "Modern Infectious Diseases: Macroeconomic Impacts and Policy Responses," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 85-131, March.
    4. Gazi Hassan & Arusha Cooray & Mark Holmes, 2017. "The effect of female and male health on economic growth: cross-country evidence within a production function framework," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 659-689, March.
    5. Fumagalli, Elena & Pinna Pintor, M & Suhrcke, Marc, 2024. "The impact of health on economic growth: A narrative literature review," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    6. Masagus M. Ridhwan & Peter Nijkamp & Affandi Ismail & Luthfi M.Irsyad, 2022. "The effect of health on economic growth: a meta-regression analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(6), pages 3211-3251, December.
    7. Gallardo-Albarrán, Daniel, 2018. "Health and economic development since 1900," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 228-237.
    8. Bloom, David E. & Kuhn, Michael & Prettner, Klaus, 2018. "Health and Economic Growth," IZA Discussion Papers 11939, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Mercedes Gumbau Albert, 2021. "The impact of health status and human capital formation on regional performance: Empirical evidence," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 100(1), pages 123-139, February.
    10. Casper Worm Hansen & Holger Strulik, 2017. "Life expectancy and education: evidence from the cardiovascular revolution," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 421-450, December.
    11. Trung V. Vu, 2023. "Life expectancy and human capital: New empirical evidence," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(2), pages 395-412, February.
    12. Bernard Sarpong & Edward Nketiah-Amponsah & Nkechi S. Owoo, 2020. "Health and Economic Growth Nexus: Evidence from Selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) Countries," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 21(2), pages 328-347, April.
    13. Alberto Bucci & Lorenzo Carbonari & Monia Ranalli & Giovanni Trovato, 2019. "Health and Development," CEIS Research Paper 470, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 24 Mar 2021.
    14. Annarita BALDANZI & Alberto BUCCI & Klaus PRETTNER, 2016. "The Effects of Health Investments on Human Capital and R&D-Driven Economic Growth," Departmental Working Papers 2016-17, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    15. Schultz, T. Paul, 2010. "Population and Health Policies," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4785-4881, Elsevier.
    16. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Günther Fink, 2014. "Disease and Development Revisited," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(6), pages 1355-1366.
    17. Mujaheed Shaikh & Afschin Gandjour, 2019. "Pharmaceutical expenditure and gross domestic product: Evidence of simultaneous effects using a two‐step instrumental variables strategy," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 101-122, January.
    18. Baldanzi, Annarita & Bucci, Alberto & Prettner, Klaus, 2021. "Children’S Health, Human Capital Accumulation, And R&D-Based Economic Growth," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 651-668, April.
    19. Kuhn, Michael & Minniti, Antonio & Prettner, Klaus & Venturini, Francesco, 2023. "Medical innovation, life expectancy, and economic growth," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 342, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    20. Bloom, David E. & Canning, David & Hu, Linlin & Liu, Yuanli & Mahal, Ajay & Yip, Winnie, 2010. "The contribution of population health and demographic change to economic growth in China and India," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 17-33, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    SADC; Endogeneity; Economic Growth; Fixed Effect; Life Expectancy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

    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:ris:ecoint:0852. 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: Angela Procopio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cacogit.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.