The Life Expectancy Miracle (Sorta)
Tyler Cowen links to this interesting paper by Charles Kenny, touting the “life expectancy miracles” of the last 50-100 years, especially in areas that we generally think are underdeveloped:
Between 1962 and 2002, life expectancy in the Middle East and North Africa increased from around 48 to 69 years – each calendar year that passed added more than six months to average life expectancy in the region…It was the strongest performance of any region in the World. Aver annual life expectancy growth over the 1962-2002 period was .9 percent in MENA compared to .85% in second place South Asia, .72 percent in East Asia, .53 percent in Latin America, .28 in Sub-Saharan Africa and .17 in Eastern Europe and Central Asia….The Gambia, Yemen, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Libya were all in the top ten gainers in life expectancy, 1962-2002.
I’d argue that life expectancy is a decidedly poor frame to judge comparable development. First of all, it is possible for countries to make huge advances in life expectancy (like the countries Kenny talks about) relatively easily. Wider availability of vaccines and antibiotics will cause life expectancy jumps of around 20-30 years, (usually from averages of around 40 up to 60 or 70). Of course, in some places – like parts of Sub-Saharan Africa – the jump hasn’t been made, but at least we know how to make it. This is roughly similar to how third world countries oftentimes have the highest economic growth rates in the world – because they have such a small base to build on, that any expansion is relatively very large. The marginal difficulty/cost of increasing life expectancy from 40-50 is much, much less
The second reason life expectancy isn’t a great development metric, especially at the Yemen-Gambia level, is that many countries have the very similar life expectancies as other countries that are much more developed. Let’s look for example at the United States, in 2000, the US average life expectancy was 77.1 years. Other countries in the 70s are Costa Rica (75.8), the Bahamas (71.1), Bosnia (71.1), Cuba (76.2), Malaysia (70.8), and Libya (75.5). It would be absurd to say that Costa Rica or Libya’s development outcomes are comparable to the United States. People in the United States are richer, freer (positively speaking) and in general have the capability to live a more fulfilling life. So sure, life expectancy gains are impressive, but all they really say is that a country isn’t enmeshed in an AIDS epidemic or haunted by infectious diseases that are easily treated or prevented most other places in the world.
