The Relationship between Energy Consumption, CO2 Emissions, Economic Growth, and Health Indicators

Abstract

The health and wellness of people through life expectancy, mortality rate improvement, and sustaining the productivity of labor contributes a lot to national income. Infrastructure development consumes energy and releases carbon dioxide at different stages of the construction process. The current study explores the nexus between CO2 emission, energy consumption, mortality, life expectancy, and GDP in the top five carbon-emitting countries by using time series data from 1975 to 2015. The study used a cointegration technique to find the long- and short-run relationships between study variables. The study also used a structural break test to identify the break time. The results of the correlation matrix show strong positive correlation between CO2 emissions and energy consumption. It also reflects a weak correlation with mortality and life expectancy in Japan and Russia. The results of the ADF test indicated that the series are stationary at first difference and provided evidence to use Johansen cointegration test for long- and short-run relationships between independent series. Vector error correction term and ECT method are used to find long-run relationships between cointegrated series and adjustment parameters. For the structural breaks of health indicators and energy consumption study, we used the Gregory Hanson structural break. Mortality rate and life expectancy rate of China, U.S., Russia, India, and Japan show relevant policy changes with economic policies of each country.