Healthy life expectancy

: is there convergence in Europe?

Abstract

To advance our knowledge on convergence in global health, this study employed data from 31 European countries to test the convergence hypothesis using Healthy life expectancy (HLE) data from 2004 to 2016.Convergence was examined through different perspectives in the literature. First, we studied the absolute and relative disparities of HLE across countries using the DMM (Dispersion measure of mortality) and the Gini coefficient. Second, we tested the hypothesis of absolute convergence analyzing the catching-up process across the European countries by ꞵ-convergence together with their degree of dispersion (measured by standard deviation). The female population registered a decreasing trend of DMM and Gini coefficient in contrast with the male population that met in the last year an increase in absolute and relative inequality. Although this positive result (speaking only for females), and the results of ꞵ-convergence that show a positive speed of convergence equal to 0.0201 for the females and 0.0163 for the males, the differences in standard deviations estimated do not show statistical significance in accepting the hypothesis of absolute convergence.In the third place, we looked at the how HLE evolved in Europe. We estimated the transition probabilities from a certain HLE value to another, and on this basis, we constructed a long-run distribution of HLE.Looking at the long-run distributions of HLE, estimated using the method proposed by Quah(1996), we observed a bimodal distribution for both genders that confirm the hypothesis of club convergence submitted to the probabilities estimated.

Date of Award	29 Jun 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Miguel Gouveia (Supervisor)