The initialpredictng factors chosen factors affect life expectancy, although to varying extents.
• Strong negative correlations: Adult Mortality, Infant Deaths, Under-Five Deaths, HIV/AIDS Prevalence, Thinness Rates.
• Strong positive correlations: BMI, GDP, Income Composition, Schooling.
• Weak or negligible correlations: Alcohol, Population, Immunization Coverage.
Should a country having a lower life expectancy value(<65) increase its healthcare expenditure in order to improve its average lifespan?
Yes, a country with lower life expectancy should increase it’s healthcare expenditure. Fo example in the case of Nigeria, with increasing health expenditure from 2005-2008 there was an increase in life expectancy and the massive decline in expenditure in 2009 led to a significant drop in life expectancy in 2009, which affected the following years, but still in the following years with increase in expenditure there was an increase in life expectancy from 2010 –2014. Also, increase in healthcare expenditure can improve access to medical services that will help reduce infant and adult mortality, and combat various infectious diseases.
How do Infant and Adult mortality rates affect life expectancy?
• Adult mortality: as adult mortality decreases over the years from 2005 – 2014, there was corresponding increase in life expectancy.
• Infant mortality: using Nigeria as a case study the years with high infant mortality also have lower life expectancy.
• Both have a strong negative Pearson correlation, therefore reducing these rates will significantly increase life expectancy.
Does Life Expectancy have a positive or negative correlation with eating habits, lifestyle, exercise, smoking, drinking alcohol, etc?
There is positive correlation between BMI, used as an indicator for eating habits (As BMI increases slightly (from 19.7 to 21.7), life expectancy also increases (from 54.8 to 53.9)and income composition (an indicator for lifestyle) and life expectancy. An increase in these two factors will lead to an increase in life expectancy. To be noted is that the BMI is in a range that is yet to enter obesity, which is why there is a positive correlation. Beyond a certain BMI there may be a negative correlation but there is no enough data to support this in the available dataset.
What is the impact of schooling on the lifespan of humans?
Schooling years had a strong positive correlation. Therefore, an increase in education wil lead to increase life expectancy. This can be explained by better health education and awareness.
Does Life Expectancy have a positive or negative relationship with drinking alcohol?
The correlation between life expectancy and alcohol consumption is negligible, according to the dataset provided. Therefore,the effect of alcohol consumption on life expectancy can’t be exactly stated.
Do densely populated countries tend to have a lower life expectancy?
Less densely populated countries tend to have higher average life expectancy (72.4 years) compared to densely populated countries (69.9 years). However,there are exceptions, most likely dueto other factors like GDP, healthcare access, and education wehich have been determinedto be critical predicting factors of life expectancy.
What is the impact of Immunization coverage on Life Expectancy?
Immunization coverage in Nigeria has negligible on life expectancy in Nigeria. Pearly, it would be expected that there is a positive correlation, but the negligible correlation may be explained by the fact that there has been consistently good immunization coverage in Nigeria over the years, and it has reached a peak where it no longer affects life expectancy.
Link to the file: docs.google.com/document/d/1iJb748U2Vq2FElC..