Why do Australians live longer than New Zealanders?

Economic uncertainty and population health: insights from emerging markets and developing countries

This study employs a Bayesian panel vector autoregressive model to examine the impact of economic uncertainty on public health, using an annual, country-level panel dataset of 103 emerging markets and developing countries spanning the years 1995 through 2019. The results from the full sample suggest that the immediate effects of heightened economic uncertainty on health are marginal, yet it may engender prolonged life expectancy and lowered mortality rates. The analysis unveils considerable heterogeneities among various country classifications. The health-enhancing effects of economic uncertainty are predominantly discernible in emerging markets, low-income and upper-middle-income countries. Additionally, a diminution in suicide rates, attributed to escalated economic uncertainty, is uniquely detected in upper-middle-income countries. Furthermore, economic growth and healthcare expenditure emerge as paramount determinants in bolstering overall population health, particularly in lower-middle-income countries. The detrimental effect of environmental pollution on health is more pronounced in emerging markets and middle-income nations. Excluding high-income countries, it is essential to emphasize the beneficial health outcomes resulting from financial development and globalization, as well as the deleterious effects of environmental pollution. Lastly, several policy implications aligned with the findings are outlined, providing a roadmap for decision-makers in these diverse economies to promote better health outcomes.

Widening ethnic mortality disparities in New Zealand 1981–99

The aim of this paper is to determine the extent of undercounting of Mäori and Pacific deaths in New Zealand during the 1980s and 1990s, and to calculate corrected ethnic mortality and life expectancy trends. We calculated adjustment ratios for undercounting of Mäori and Pacific deaths (and over-counting of non-Mäori non-Pacific (nMnP) deaths) using the linked census-mortality data. These ratios were then used to calculate corrected mortality rates and life expectancies. Mäori deaths were underestimated by a quarter, and Pacific deaths by a third, during the 1980s and early 1990s. Undercounting was minor in the late 1990s following alignment of ethnicity collection on mortality data to approximate the census. Corrected mortality rates demonstrated 30% (males) and 26% (females) decreases among nMnP from 1980-84 to 1996-99, smaller decreases among Mäori (8% and 7%) and no clear change among Pacific people (9% decrease for males, 4% increase for females). The gap in life expectancy increased from an average of 7.7 years in 1980-84 to 10.8 years in 1996-99 for Mäori, and from 3.3 to 7.7 years for Pacific people, in comparison to nMnP people. Deaths among 45-64 and 65 plus year olds, and cardiovascular disease and cancer deaths, were the main contributors to these disparities. The economic reforms in New Zealand during the 1980s and early 1990s impacted harder upon Mäori and Pacific people in terms of unemployment and income, and are a likely explanation for the diverging mortality trends in this period. Both behavioural factors and health services probably also play a role, but in the absence of trend data by ethnicity, their contribution to diverging mortality trends is unknown. Internationally, our study demonstrates marked undercounting of Mäori and Pacific deaths. We strongly encourage researchers and custodians of vital statistics in other countries to investigate the possibility of undercounting of deaths by ethnicity.