A closer look at the relationship between life expectancy and economic growth
We thank Noel Bonneuil, Matteo Cervellati, David de la Croix, Frédéric Dufourt, Natali Hritonenko, Yuri Yatsenko and two anonymous referees of this journal for numerous stimulating observations and suggestions that have decisively shaped this version. The financial support of the Belgian French speaking community (ARC 03/08-302) and of the Belgian Federal Government (PAI P5/10) is gratefully acknowledged.
Institutional Login
Log in to Wiley Online Library
If you have previously obtained access with your personal account, please log in.
Purchase Instant Access
Abstract
We first provide a nonparametric inference of the relationship between life expectancy and economic growth using historical data for 18 countries over the period 1820–2005. The obtained shape indicates convexity for low enough values of life expectancy and concavity for large enough values. We then study this relationship using a benchmark model combining “perpetual youth” and learning-by-investing. The generated relationship between life expectancy and economic growth is shown to be strictly increasing and concave. We finally examine two models departing from “perpetual youth” by assuming successively age-dependent earnings and age-dependent survival probabilities. With age-dependent earnings, the obtained relationship is hump-shaped, whereas age-dependent survival laws reproduce the convex–concave shape detected in prior empirical study.
