Impact of energy consumption on life expectancy in lower-middle-income West African countries
Life expectancy is a key determinant of a nation’s health and well-being. However, West African countries face several challenges in improving life expectancy, such as inadequate healthcare infrastructure, corruption, poor sanitation, and environmental quality due to environmental degradation. In addition, energy accessibility is an important determinant of health outcomes and environmental quality. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 7, 12, 13, 14, and 15 are directly linked with energy access; achieving these goals will lead to an improvement in energy access. Therefore, in this study, using data obtained from the World Bank and the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin, we investigated the impact of energy consumption and corruption on life expectancy in lower-middle-income West African countries from 1990 to 2021. The results of the cross-sectional auto-regressive distributed lag technique showed that renewable energy has a positive and significant impact on life expectancy in lower-middle-income West African countries in both the short and long run. However, non-renewable energy was found to have a significant and negative impact on life expectancy in the long run and a negative but non-significant impact in the short run. Corruption had a debilitating effect on life expectancy in both the short and long run. We recommend that policymakers should make a conscious and deliberate push toward transitioning to renewable energy through public–private partnerships to provide affordable and clean energy while tackling corruption.
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