School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK.
Health Econ. 2023 Feb;32(2):395-412. doi: 10.1002/hec.4626. Epub 2022 Oct 31.
This paper re-examines a well-established hypothesis postulating that life expectancy augments incentives for human capital accumulation, leading to global income differences. A major distinguishing feature of the current study is to estimate heterogeneous panel data models under a common factor framework, which explicitly accounts for parameter heterogeneity, unobserved common factors (UCFs), and variables' non-stationarity. In sharp contrast to most previous studies, I find that the impact of health improvements on human capital accumulation turns out to be imprecisely estimated at conventionally accepted levels of statistical significance. I demonstrate that conventional estimates of the educational returns to rising longevity are derived from estimating misspecified models at least partially due to parameter heterogeneity and the presence of UCFs.
本文重新审视了一个既定的假说，即预期寿命的延长会增加人力资本积累的动力，从而导致全球收入差异。本研究的一个主要特点是在共同因素框架下估计异质面板数据模型，该模型明确考虑了参数异质性、未观测的共同因素（UCF）和变量的非平稳性。与大多数先前的研究形成鲜明对比的是，我发现健康状况的改善对人力资本积累的影响在传统上可接受的统计显著性水平上的估计结果并不精确。我证明，由于参数异质性和 UCF 的存在，至少部分原因是对模型的错误设定，导致了对不断延长的寿命的教育回报率的传统估计。
