Supplementary information files for Life expectancy and human capital: New empirical evidence

Supplementary files for article Life expectancy and human capital: New empirical evidence <br> This paper re-examines a well-established hypothesis postulating that life expectancy augments incentives for human capital accumulation, leading to global income differences. A major distinguishing feature of the current study is to estimate heterogeneous panel data models under a common factor framework, which explicitly accounts for parameter heterogeneity, unobserved common factors (UCFs), and variables' non-stationarity. In sharp contrast to most previous studies, I find that the impact of health improvements on human capital accumulation turns out to be imprecisely estimated at conventionally accepted levels of statistical significance. I demonstrate that conventional estimates of the educational returns to rising longevity are derived from estimating misspecified models at least partially due to parameter heterogeneity and the presence of UCFs.

《预期寿命（life expectancy）与人力资本（human capital）：新的实证证据》的补充材料
本文重新检验了一项广为认可的假说：该假说提出，预期寿命会提升人力资本积累的激励，进而导致全球收入差距。本研究的核心特色在于，于共同因子框架（common factor framework）下估计异质性面板数据模型（heterogeneous panel data models），该框架可明确考量参数异质性、不可观测共同因子（unobserved common factors, UCFs）以及变量的非平稳性（non-stationarity）。与绝大多数既往研究形成鲜明反差的是，本文发现，在学界公认的统计显著性（statistical significance）水平下，健康改善对人力资本积累的影响无法得到精确估计。本文证明，学界关于寿命延长的教育回报率（educational returns）的传统估计，至少部分源于对设定错误的模型进行估计，而此类模型设定错误与参数异质性及不可观测共同因子的存在密切相关。