Life Expectancy in West African Countries: Evidence of Convergence and Catching Up with the North

Yaya, OlaOluwa S and Oyekunrin, Oluwaseun A and Ogbonna, Ahamuefula E (2020): Life Expectancy in West African Countries: Evidence of Convergence and Catching Up with the North.

Abstract

We investigate the possibility of convergence and catching up of life expectancy values of West African countries with those of North African countries. Following the theory of time series convergence documented in Bernard and Durlauf (1996) and Greasley and Oxley (1997), we apply more robust unit root tests, based on Fourier nonlinearity and instantaneous breaks, proposed in Furuoka (2017) in investigating the convergence of each pair, that is, a West African country with that of a particular North Africa country. As no unit root in the differences of the pair implies convergence, the results obtained by the new statistical approach quite outperform those of classical unit root tests. The results show general evidence of convergence of life expectancy values of those in West Africa to those of the North.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Africa; Convergence; Fourier function; Life expectancy ratio; Nonlinearity; Unit root
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C2 - Single Equation Models ; Single Variables > C22 - Time-Series Models ; Dynamic Quantile Regressions ; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models ; Diffusion Processes; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C5 - Econometric Modeling

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