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

Raouf Boucekkine (), DIENE Bity and Théophile Thomas Azomahou

No 2007043, Discussion Papers (ECON - Département des Sciences Economiques) from Université catholique de Louvain, Département des Sciences Economiques

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 Òperpetual youthÓ 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 Òperpetual youthÓ by assuming age-dependent survival probabilities. We show that life-cycle behavior combined with age-dependent survival 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: O41 I20 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dev and nep-hea
Date: 2007-12-14
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Related works:
Working Paper: A closer look at the relationship between life expectancy and economic growth (2007)
Working Paper: A Closer Look at the Relationship Between Life Expectancy and Economic Growth (2008)
Journal Article: A closer look at the relationship between life expectancy and economic growth (2009)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctl:louvec:2007043

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