A closer look at the relationship between life expectancy and economic growth

Raouf Boucekkine (), Bity Diene and Theophile Azomahou

Working Papers from Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow

Abstract: We first provide a nonparametric inference of the relationship between life expectancy and economic growth on an historical data for 18 countries over the period 1820-2005. The obtained shape shows up convexity for low enough values of life expectancy and concavity for large enough values. We then study this relationship on a benchmark model combining "per- petual youth" and learning-by-investing. In such a benchmark, the generated relationship between life expectancy and economic growth is shown to be strictly increasing and concave. We finally examine a model departing from "perpetual youth" by assuming age-dependent survival probabilities. We show that life-cycle behavior combined with age-dependent sur- vival laws can reproduce our empirical finding.

Keywords: Life expectancy; economic growth; perpetual youth; age-dependent mortality; nonparametric estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 J10 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dev and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: A closer look at the relationship between life expectancy and economic growth (2009)
Working Paper: A closer look at the relationship between life expectancy and economic growth (2009)
Working Paper: A Closer Look at the Relationship Between Life Expectancy and Economic Growth (2008)
Working Paper: A closer look at the relationship between life expectancy and economic growth (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gla:glaewp:2007_24

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