Beyene Sisay Demissew, Kotosz Balázs
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Doctoral School of Economics, University of Szeged, Hungary.
College of Business and Economics, Department of Economics, Arsi University, Assela, Ethiopia.
J Health Pollut. 2021 Mar 2;11(29):210312. doi: 10.5696/2156-9614-11.29.210312. eCollection 2021 Mar.
Protecting the health of citizens is a central aim of sustainable development plans, due to the effect of health on social and economic development. However, studies show that environment-related diseases adversely affect the health status of a people, and this situation is worse for African countries. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets have included reducing environment-related deaths since 2015. However, there is a lack of empirical findings focused on the effects of environmental quality on life expectancy in Africa.
The present study examined the impact of environmental quality on life expectancy in 24 African countries.
Time-series data ranging from 2000 to 2016 was used and the panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)-dynamic fixed effect (DFE) model was employed to analyze the data.
The results confirmed that, in the long run, improvements in environmental quality significantly increased life expectancy in the studied African countries during the study period. A unit increment in environmental performance index (EPI) and ecosystem vitality (EV) increased the life expectancy of Africans by 0.137 and 0.1417 years, respectively.
To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical (econometric) study using a broad measurement (indicator) of environmental quality to investigate its impact on life expectancy in African countries. The study recommends that the introduction of environmentally friendly economies (like renewable energy, land, water, and waste management), legal, socio-economic, demographic, and technological measures are essential to reduce environmental pollution and improve life expectancy in Africa.
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
由于健康对社会和经济发展的影响，保护公民健康是可持续发展计划的核心目标。然而，研究表明，与环境相关的疾病会对人们的健康状况产生不利影响，这种情况在非洲国家更为严重。自2015年以来，可持续发展目标（SDG）指标已包括减少与环境相关的死亡人数。然而，缺乏专注于环境质量对非洲预期寿命影响的实证研究结果。
本研究考察了环境质量对24个非洲国家预期寿命的影响。
使用了2000年至2016年的时间序列数据，并采用面板自回归分布滞后（ARDL）-动态固定效应（DFE）模型对数据进行分析。
结果证实，从长期来看，在研究期间，环境质量的改善显著提高了所研究非洲国家的预期寿命。环境绩效指数（EPI）和生态系统活力（EV）每增加一个单位，非洲人的预期寿命分别增加0.137岁和0.141岁。
据作者所知，这是第一项使用广泛的环境质量衡量指标（指标）来调查其对非洲国家预期寿命影响的实证（计量经济学）研究。该研究建议，引入环境友好型经济（如可再生能源、土地、水和废物管理）、法律、社会经济、人口和技术措施对于减少环境污染和提高非洲的预期寿命至关重要。
作者声明不存在相互竞争的财务利益。
