WHY WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MAN? LESSON FROM SUDAN

Gender disparities exist in various forms and frequently have significant impact on economic growth, especially in less developed economies. The magnitude of this gap is likely to have a significant effect on the socioeconomic structure and distribution of wealth within an economy. This article aims at investigating factors affecting gender disparities in life expectancy in Sudan. The analysis examines the long and short run impacts of selected socioeconomics and environmental factors on gender disparities in life expectancy in Sudan during the period 1960-2009. Employing the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique, the results significantly show that in both short and long run periods, education tends to increase the gap, whilst pollution has negative impact in reducing the existing gap. The Wald F-test for causality suggests that in the long run there is strong causality relationship which flow from income, education and pollution towards gender gap in life expectancy. The finding suggests that, although life expectancy gap in Sudan is affected by socioeconomic and environmental factors, the existence in the gap might also create reciprocal effect onto these factors respectively. Thus, it is crucial for the policy-makers in Sudan to continuously support programmes which have positive impacts on the population’s life expectancy, particularly among the females.