Empirical Evidence for the Impact of Environmental Quality on Life Expectancy in African Countries

BACKGROUND. 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. OBJECTIVES. The present study examined the impact of environmental quality on life expectancy in 24 African countries. METHODS. 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. RESULTS. 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. CONCLUSIONS. 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. COMPETING INTERESTS. The authors declare no competing financial interests.