Does External Debt Promote Human Longevity in Developing Countries? Evidence from West African Countries

Abstract

This study assessed the impact of external debt on longevity in developing countries, particularly in West Africa, from 1981 to 2020. Longevity was proxied by life expectancy at birth, while the study evaluated effects from external debt from the perspective of sustainability, liquidity, and solvency. Furthermore, outcomes from macroeconomic volatility were controlled through inflation and exchange rate variability. Methodologically, the robustness of inferences was ensured by using estimated outcomes from the cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL), dynamic common correlated effects (DCCE), and the Driscoll–Kraay (D–K) methods. Empirically, the study showed that unsustainable, illiquid, and insolvent external debt and macroeconomic volatility shorten longevity mainly in the long-term in West African countries. Hence, longevity will decline when weak external debt management promotes poverty in developing countries.