Using Baltagi and Li (2002)’s semi-parametric fixed effects regression estimator, we investigate the existence of an aggregate ‘Kuznets curve’ in a sample of 113 countries over the 1960–2000 period. Our results show that misspecification of the functional form in a panel model with...

This paper shows that improvements in life expectancy (LE) had a non-linear effect on income per capita over the 1940-1980 period as this effect was conditional on each country's initial level of LE. Whereas higher LE had an initial statistically significant negative impact on income per capita...