Exploring the dynamics of income growth and healthy life expectancy in India

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between healthy life expectancy and economic growth in India from 1990 to 2019, employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag framework. The results show a long run cointegrating relationship among the variables. The findings indicate that short term income gains positively influence healthy life expectancy. However, the long run negative relationship suggest that sustained economic growth alone does not guarantee improved health outcomes, likely due to unequal distribution of its benefits and the associated burden of non-communicable diseases. Education positively and significantly influences healthy life expectancy, while income inequality and innovations exhibit mixed and insignificant effects, respectively. Causality tests reveal predominantly unidirectional causation from income to healthy life expectancy, indicating that while socioeconomic progress drives health improvements, reverse causality from health to growth remains weak. The findings of the study suggest that inclusive growth, equitable access to education and healthcare and stronger alignment between innovation and public healthcare are crucial to sustaining India’s longevity gains. The results of the study provide empirical support for policies promoting human capital and health equity in line with sustainable development goals 3 and 10.