International Evidence: Life Expectancy and GDP

The Gapminder graph above (click to enlarge, or access larger version available here) shows some cross-sectional statistical evidence of the strong link between: a) GDP per capita and b) Life Expectancy for countries around the world, to follow my CD post from yesterday about the time series evidence for the U.S.

In the graph above, high-income countries (approximately $20,000 to $50,000 in real, per capita GDP) have life expectancies at birth of about 80 years, which is about 25 years longer than the average life expectancy of about 55 years for the low-income countries (less than $2,000 in per capita GDP). As a rough estimate, a country’s life expectancy at birth increases by about one additional year for every $1,500 increase in real GDP per capita.

See more here at the Enterprise Blog.