Hormones and human capital

Abstract

Do hormones determine human capital by rewarding learning? The key prediction that the paper tests is that real gross domestic product, in total or per capita terms, which is indirectly produced by hormones, correlates positively with life expectancy. This would be because the biological justification of hormones is to enable the species to flourish. We develop a dynamic optimization model of how hormones affect life expectancy and test a reduced form of it with a panel dataset of 181 countries over the period from 2015 through 2020, yielding more than a thousand observations. Independent variables include the growth rate of GDP (which is a proxy for the growth rate of hormones), the share of youths in the national population (an alternative proxy for the growth rate of hormones), the share of middle-aged adults in the population (which measures family learning about health, which can increase life expectancy), the rate of enrollment in secondary schools among age-eligible youths (which measures general education), the female share of the population (which measures the impact on life expectancy of hormones that promote trust, such as oxytocin), the infant mortality rate, and country fixed effects. All data are from the World Development Indicators of the World Bank. We conclude that institutions may account for more of the economic impacts on life expectancy than hormones do. Code: 10, 20, 30