Dynamic Linkages Among Energy Consumption, Environment and Health Sustainability: Evidence from the Different Income Level Countries

Abstract

Environment pollution was closely related to human health. The energy consumption is one of the important sources of environmental pollution in the development of economy. This paper used undesirable two-stage meta-frontier DDF (distance difference function) data envelopment analysis model to explore the impact of environment pollutants from energy consumption on the mortality of children and the aged, survival rate of 65 years old and health expenditure efficiency in 27 high income countries, 21 upper middle income countries, and 16 lower middle income countries from 2010 to 2014. High income countries had higher efficiency of energy and health than middle income countries in general. But whether in high income or middle income countries, the efficiency of non-renewable energy is higher than renewable energy. There was much room for both high income countries and middle income countries to improve renewable energy efficiency. Besides, middle income countries need to improve the efficiency of non-renewable energy and reduce pollutant emissions per unit of GDP. In terms of health efficiency, upper middle income countries performed worse than lower income countries. This phenomenon might indicate there was a U-shaped relationship between health efficiency and income level. Upper income countries should pay more attention to the environmental and health problems and cross the U-shaped turning point. The contribution of this article was to consider the heterogeneous performance of energy efficiency, environmental efficiency, and health efficiency under the influence of income level differences, and found that there might be a U-shaped relationship between health efficiency and income level.

Air Pollution’s Impact on the Economic, Social, Medical, and Industrial Injury Environments in China

“…The traditional DDF is a radial measurement model, but the efficiency calculation fails to include all non-zero differences and all sources of inefficiency. Therefore, the efficiency value of an institute is overestimated (Feng et al [ 39 ] and Fang et al [ 40 ]). To solve this type of problem, Färe and Grosskopf [ 41 ] and Chen et al [ 42 ] established a non-radial direction distance function.…”

“…However, Färe and Grosskopf [ 41 ] noted that the DDF non-radial distance function fails to consider two-stage inter-period continuous effects, regional differences, and external environmental issues. Following the Feng et al [ 39 ], Fang et al [ 40 ], Li et al [ 43 ], and Tone and Tsutsui [ 44 ] dynamics, two-stage DEA, and O’Donnell et al [ 45 ] common boundary (meta-frontier), this paper proposes a meta-two-stage undesirable dynamic DDF under an exogenous model. This present paper uses this model to evaluate production efficiency and social insurance treatment efficiency in China to avoid the underestimation or overestimation of efficiency values.…”

An Exploratory DEA and Machine Learning Framework for the Evaluation and Analysis of Sustainability Composite Indicators in the EU

“…The choice of the parameters that were used to form the various sub-indicators was based on the literature (from works such as [9,24,73,[78][79][80][81]94,95]) and the availability of common data. The authors do not claim that the list is exhaustive, but it serves to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed computational framework.…”

Pollution, Inflammation, and Vaccines: A Complex Crosstalk

“…It is important to remember that the above-listed consequences of the interaction between vaccination and immunity are a social issue as well, besides being a medical one, given their impact on lower-income countries rather than on the higher-income ones [ 137 , 138 ].…”