Li Qiang, Loh Chung-Ping A, Ye Yuli
Public Administration School, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China.
Institute of Rural Revitalization, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China.
Scand J Public Health. 2025 May;53(3):225-232. doi: 10.1177/14034948231178879. Epub 2024 Mar 7.
Press freedom around the globe has deteriorated over the past decade, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper explores the effect of press freedom, as a cornerstone of democracy, on life expectancy.
Exploring cross-country data, we use the ordinary least square method to estimate the association between press freedom and life expectancy. In addition, we adopt three novel instrumental variables to explore the causal relationship.
Our estimations indicate that a freer press leads to higher life expectancy, and the effect exists independently of the level of democracy. In addition, the effect of continuous exposure to press freedom is stronger than sporadic free press status. The results are robust to measurement errors, influential outliers, and country-specific heterogeneity.
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在过去十年中，全球的新闻自由状况有所恶化，尤其是在新冠疫情期间。本文探讨作为民主基石的新闻自由对预期寿命的影响。
通过分析跨国数据，我们使用普通最小二乘法来估计新闻自由与预期寿命之间的关联。此外，我们采用三个新的工具变量来探究因果关系。
我们的估计表明，更自由的新闻媒体会带来更高的预期寿命，且该影响独立于民主水平而存在。此外，持续享有新闻自由的影响比偶尔的新闻自由状况更强。结果在测量误差、有影响力的异常值和特定国家的异质性方面具有稳健性。
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