Revisiting the empirical relationship among the main targets of sustainable development: Growth, education, health and carbon emissions

The present study attempts to analyse the empirical relationship among economic growth, labour, capital, education, health and greenhouse gas emission. For empirical estimations, we have used the data of 179 countries which further divided in sub categories; income‐level, OECD‐level and regional‐level to obtain the comprehensive empirics. The coefficients of labour and capital are significant and positive, validating the Solow growth theory. For education and carbon emission, the coefficients are insignificant in short run, while significant and positive in long run, mentioning that the reforms related to education system and climate change mitigation policies need long time to have its influence on economy. In case of health issues, the coefficients are significant and negative, indicating that higher health issues have negative impact on economic growth. The empirics of education have confirmed significant and negative relationship with greenhouse gas emission which identifies that greenhouse gas emission can reduced by educating by rising education standards. In addition, we confirm the adverse impact of greenhouse gas emission on health. The study provides policy implications for overcoming problems in economic growth, health, education and climate change mitigation as they are linked with each other, directly or indirectly. The priority policy should be increase education having positive impact on health following greenhouse gas emission reduction and finally providing for sustainable economic growth. Highlights Economic, health, education and climate change issues are closely related; Panel data analysis for analysis for 179 countries was applied; GHG emissions have adverse impact on health; Pour health has inverse impact on economic growth; Education has positive impact on economic, health and climate in long‐term