The evaluation of development processes and of public policies often involves comparisons of social states that differ in income distributions, population sizes and life longevity. This may require social evaluation principles to be sensitive to the quality, the quantity and the duration of...

In this paper we identify countries that have better outcomes than the United States with respect to life expectancy. Using this sample of countries, relationships between the life expectancy outcomes and health care costs are examined, and we also test whether the extent of public financing has...

This study explores the relationship between women heads-of-state and their impact on Human Development in their country. Mainly, the intent of this paper is to determine whether women heads-of-state do a better job as compared to their male counterparts in improving health, education and...

Hansen and Lønstrup [Journal of Population Economics, 2012] construct a three-period, life-cycle model to study the famed Ben-Porath mechanism and attempt to reconcile it with the empirical findings in Hazan [Econometrica, 2009]:increased life expectancy has a positive effect on schooling but a...

Purpose – The paper aims to theoretically and empirically investigate the impact on human capital investment decisions and income growth of lowered life expectancy as a result of HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical model is a three-period overlapping...

Over the last 200 years, humans experienced a huge increase of life expectancy. These advances were largely driven by extrinsic improvements of their environment (for example, the available diet, disease prevalence, vaccination, and the state of hygiene and sanitation). In this paper, we ask...

An average person born in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century completed 7 years of schooling and spent 58 hours a week working in the market. By contrast, an average person born at the end of the twentieth century completed 14 years of schooling and spent 40 hours a...

We analyze the interplay between longevity, pollution and growth. We develop an OLG model where longevity, pollution and growth are endogenous. The authorities may provide two types of public services, public health and environmental maintenance, that participate to increase agents’ life...