Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Azomahou, Théophile
Author-Email: azomahou@merit.unu.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: UNU-MERIT
Author-Name: Boucekkine, Raouf
Author-Email: boucekkine@core.ucl.ac.be
Author-Workplace-Name: CORE, Universite Catholique de Louvain
Author-Name: Diene, Bity
Author-Email: diene@cournot.u-strasbg.fr
Author-Workplace-Name: BETA, Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg
Title: A Closer Look at the Relationship Between Life Expectancy and Economic Growth
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 perpetual 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 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 while agedependent survival laws do reproduce the 
	 convex-concave shape detected in the prior empirical study.
Classification-JEL: O41, I20, J10 
Keywords: Life expectancy, economic growth, perpetual youth, age-dependent
	 mortality, nonparametric estimation
Series: UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Creation-Date: 2008
Number: 027
File-URL: http://www.merit.unu.edu/publications/wppdf/2008/wp2008-027.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 275 Kb
Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2008027