A study on life expectancy in Turkey

Abstract

Life expectancy, in general, is one of the crucial determinants of a country’s health status. This is particularly valid for the countries where industrialization has been improving. Turkey is one of the leading countries within this category, and there are limited number of studies about causal relationship between life expectancy and its determinants. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore causal relationship between life expectancy and its determinants during the period of 1975-2014. In order to analyze the causal relationship between life expectancy at birth and its economic and environmental determinants; gross domestic product per capita, food production index, CO2 emissions (kt), and urbanization were identified as factors influencing life expectancy at birth. Regarding the data obtained, the causal relationship between life expectancy and its determinants was investigated employing the Granger causality test based on VECM for a sample of Turkey. The results indicated that although the variables used in the model have had a long run relationship (i.e., GDP per capita, food production index, CO2 (kt), and urbanization), the urbanization is the only Granger cause of life expectancy at birth for Turkey.

Keywords

• Life expectancy
• urbanization
• cointegration
• Granger causality

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