Investigating the causal relationship between woman's health and economic growth in groups D8 and G7 countries

Abstract

There are different perspectives about the relationship between woman's health and economic growth. The question among economists is, whether the economic growth is affected by woman's health or economic growth causes woman's health? Accordingly, the major purpose of this study is to investigate the causal relationship between woman's health and economic growth group by using the Conjugated Granger Causality Approach and the Dumitrescu and Hurlin's test over the period 1990–2016 in two groups of D8 and G7 countries. Results indicate that in the D8 countries, the hypothesis of no causal relationship between life expectancy, fertility rate and economic growth mortality cannot be rejected at a significant level of 5%, but the hypothesis of no relationship causes of economic growth are rejected by life expectancy, fertility rates and mortality rates. Therefore, there is a one-way causal relationship between economic growth in life expectancy, fertility rates and mortality rates. On the other hand, the study for G7 group countries shows that, the hypothesis of no causal relationship between life expectancy and mortality rate to economic growth as well as the absence of causality from economic growth to life expectancy and mortality rates cannot be rejected at a significant level of 5%. Therefore, there is no causal relationship between life expectancy and mortality rate and economic growth and these two variables have no effect on each other. Also, the hypothesis of no causal relationship between fertility rate and economic growth and absence of causality relation from economic growth to fertility rate is rejected at the significant level of 5%. There is therefore a two-way causal link between fertility rate and economic growth.