Life expectancy and human capital: New empirical evidence
重新检验了预期寿命促进人力资本积累的假说，使用异质性面板数据模型发现，在考虑参数异质性和未观测共同因子后，健康改善对人力资本积累的影响在统计上不显著。
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.