Impact of Economic, Environmental and Social Factors on Health Status in Tunisia: Bounds Test to Cointegration Approach

The objective of this paper is to examine the effect of socioeconomic and environmental factors on health status in Tunisia. Data used are annual and taken from the database of the World Bank for the period 1995-2012. We employ the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. In the proposed model, health status is measured by life expectancy at birth and the factors that determine health status are: the unemployment rate, the population growth rate, the Gross Domestic Product per capita, Expenditure on health total as a percentage of GDP, Expenditure on education total as a percentage of GDP, and improved access to water. The results of the long-term relationship estimation between determinants and health status show that health expenditure, education expenditure, Gross Domestic Product and improved access to water are positively related to the state while the population growth rate and the unemployment rate have an adverse effect. Regarding the short-term relationship, the results show a positive effect of population growth rate, improved access to drinking water, education expenditure, health expenditures, gross domestic product and health status. On the other hand, the results indicate the existence of a negative effect of the unemployment rate on the health status.