Abstract
In this study, we investigate the relationship between economic growth and health outcomes under the Kuznets curve (KC) hypothesis for 60 developing countries during the period 1995 to 2010 using unbalanced panel data method and the health production function model. The results show that the turning points and shapes of the health Kuznets curve (HKC) change based on the kind of health proxy variables, suggesting that there is not a specific HKC for health outcomes. Thus, health policies need to be ?customized? for each health indicator and not standardized. Moreover, based on these results, health policies that ignore the detrimental effects of pollution may not deliver the full realizable health gains that could be derived from higher socioeconomic levels.
Highlights
Health policies that focus on just socioeconomic aspects and ignore the adverse impacts of the pollution may do little in efforts directed to improve the current health status of developing countries and may not deliver the full realizable health gains that could be derived from higher socioeconomic levels
We explore whether or not there is a curve such as Kuznets curve (KC)/environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for population health outcomes
The results obtained from the fixed effects regression model suggest that, whereas socioeconomic and lifestyle factors improve the health status, only environmental factors have a prohibitive effect on health outcomes
Summary
There exists a large literature that has analyzed the relationship between economic growth and health outcomes. Researches on income elasticity of life expectancy at birth have shown that there is a positive relationship between increment income and life expectancy (Gangadharan and Valenzuela 2001) Most of these studies control other factors that affect the health status such as, the accessibility of health services, population, and education levels. Some studies in the pollution emission and health status literature have found statistically significant and positive relationship between various pollutants and infant mortality rate (Gangadharan and Valenzuela 2001; Maya Federman and David Levine 2010), in other studies, a negative link between increment pollutants and life expectancy has been concluded Socioeconomic factors are positively but environmental and lifestyle factors are negatively related to the health status This main result can enforce the thought that the degradations in environment. Lifestyle are generated in line with economic growth may delink the increasing monotonic link between economic growth and health outcomes
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