Unveiling the health consequences of air pollution in the world's most polluted nations.

Air pollution poses a persuasive threat to global health, demonstrating widespread detrimental effects on populations worldwide. Exposure to pollutants, notably particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 µm (PM2.5), has been unequivocally linked to a spectrum of adverse health outcomes. A nuanced understanding of the relationship between them is crucial for implementing effective policies. This study employs a comprehensive investigation, utilizing the extended health production function framework alongside the system generalized method of moments (SGMM) technique, to scrutinize the interplay between air pollution and health outcomes. Focusing on a panel of the top twenty polluted nations from 2000 to 2021, the findings yield substantial insights. Notably, PM2.5 concentration emerges as a significant factor, correlating with a reduction in life expectancy by 3.69 years and an increase in infant mortality rates by 0.294%. Urbanization is found to increase life expectancy by 0.083 years while concurrently decreasing infant mortality rates by 0.00022%. An increase in real per capita gross domestic product corresponds with an improvement in life expectancy by 0.21 years and a decrease in infant mortality rates by 0.00065%. Similarly, an elevated school enrollment rate is associated with a rise in life expectancy by 0.17 years and a decline in infant mortality rates by 0.00032%. However, a higher population growth rate is found to modestly decrease life expectancy by 0.019 years and slightly elevate infant mortality rates by 0.000016%. The analysis reveals that per capita greenhouse gas emissions exert a negative impact, diminishing life expectancy by 0.486 years and elevating infant mortality rates by 0.00061%, while per capita energy consumption marginally reduces life expectancy by 0.026 years and increases infant mortality rates by 0.00004%. Additionally, economic volatility shock presents a notable decrement in life expectancy by 0.041 years and an increase in infant mortality rates by 0.000045%, with inflationary shock further exacerbating adverse health outcomes by lowering life expectancy by 0.70 years and elevating infant mortality rates by 0.00025%. Moreover, the study scrutinizes the role of institutional quality, revealing a constructive impact on health outcomes. Specifically, the institutional quality index is associated with an increase in life expectancy by 0.66% and a decrease in infant mortality rates by 0.0006%. Extending the analysis to examine the nuanced dimensions of institutional quality, the findings discern that economic institutions wield a notably stronger positive influence on health outcomes compared to political and institutional governance indices. Finally, the results underscore the pivotal moderating role of institutional quality in mitigating the deleterious impact of PM2.5 concentration on health outcomes, counterbalancing the influence of external shocks, and improving the relationships between explanatory variables and health outcome indicators. These findings offer critical insights for guiding evidence-based policy implications, with a focus on fostering resilient, sustainable, and health-conscious societies.

Food insecurity, environment, institutional quality, and health outcomes: evidence from South Asia.

BACKGROUND: Food insecurity and environmental degradation pose significant threats to health outcomes in South Asia, necessitating effective policy interventions. Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of food insecurity and environmental degradation on health outcome indicators amidst global inflationary shocks and institutional quality arrangements. Additionally, it aims to explore the intricate moderating role of institutional quality on the relationship between food insecurity, endogenous variables, and external shocks. METHOD: In alignment with the study's objectives, a set of panel data spanning from 2000 to 2021 is compiled for South Asia. The study introduces a novel variable representing inflationary shock, crafted through the integration of inflation datapoints and the application of the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model. Additionally, a distinctive aggregate institutional quality index is formulated, drawing from six key measures of the Worldwide Governance indicators. To scrutinize the effects of food insecurity, environmental degradation, and other explanatory variables, the study employs the two-step system generalized method of moment technique, offering a robust analytical approach to uncover complex relationships and dynamics in the region. RESULTS: The results indicate that the prevalence of undernourishment, inequality in per capita calorie intake, and CO2 emissions significantly reduce life expectancy and increase mortality rates. Additionally, it shows that per capita kilocalorie supply, per capita GDP, per capita health expenditures, and urbanization are statistically significant for increasing life expectancy and decreasing mortality rates. The findings reveal that inflationary shocks severely affect food insecurity and environmental factors, exerting further pressure on contemporary life expectancy and mortality rates. In rebuttal, the institutional quality index is found to have significant effects on increasing and decreasing life expectancy and mortality rates, respectively. Furthermore, the institutional quality index is effective in moderating the nexus between food insecurity, environmental degradation, and health outcomes while also neutralizing the negative impact of inflationary shocks on the subject. CONCLUSION: The results verify triple health constraints such as food insecurity, environmental factors, and economic vulnerability to global shocks, which impose severe effects on life expectancy and mortality rates. Furthermore, poor institutional quality is identified as a hindrance to health outcomes in South Asia. The findings suggest specific policy implications that are explicitly discussed.

Socioeconomic inequalities in child and adolescent mental health in Australia: the role of parenting style and parents' relationships.

BACKGROUND: Socioeconomic inequalities in health and their determinants have been studied extensively over the past few decades. However, the role of parenting style and parents' couple relationships in explaining mental health inequalities is limited. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the distributional impact of parenting style (angry parenting, consistent parenting, and inductive parenting) and parents' couple relationships (e.g., argumentative, happy relationships) on socioeconomic inequalities and by extension on mental health status of Australian children and adolescents. METHODS: This study utilized data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (Waves 1-7), specifically focusing on intact biological parent families, while excluding single-parent and blended-family households. We applied the decomposition index and the Blinder Oaxaca method to investigate the extent of the contribution and temporal impact of parenting style and parents' couple relationships on the mental health status of Australian children and adolescents. RESULTS: This study revealed that poor parenting style is the single most important factor that leads to developing mental health difficulties in children and adolescents, especially from low socioeconomic status, and it contributes almost 52% to socioeconomic inequalities in mental health status. Conversely, household income, maternal education, employment status, and parents' couple relationships contributed 28.04%, 10.67%, 9.28%, and 3.34%, respectively, to mental health inequalities in children and adolescents. CONCLUSION: Overall, this study underscores the importance of parenting style and parents' couple relationships as significant predictors of mental health outcomes in children and adolescents. These results highlight the need for targeted interventions to support families from low socioeconomic backgrounds to address the significant mental health inequalities observed in the study population.

The validity of the environmental Kuznets curve in the presence of long-run civil wars: A case of Afghanistan.

The war in Afghanistan left significantly negative consequences in all spheres of its society, leading the country to the highest levels of poverty, hunger, and environmental damage. This study explores the long-run impact of civil wars on environmental degradation in Afghanistan using the conceptual framework of the Environmental Kuznets Curve and models augmented with pollutants, civil wars, comprehensive financial development index, and macroeconomic predictors on a set of data from the first quarter of 2002 to the first quarter of 2020. However, while the results confirm long-run relationships amid indicators by the autoregressive distributed lags bound test, the results of the vector error-correcting model to Granger causality reveal bidirectional causality links between CO2 emissions, per capita real GDP, civil wars, the financial development index, energy consumption, trade openness, and the inflation rate in the long-run, while the findings extend to confirm multidimensionality and interdependencies among predictors in the short-run. Moreover, the results indicate dual findings. First, it confirms that civil wars, the financial development index, per capita real gross domestic product, population growth, and the inflation rate significantly increase CO2 emissions, while the squared per capita real gross domestic product, energy consumption, and trade openness reduce CO2 emissions both in the short and long runs. Second, the results confirm an inverted U-shaped relationship, supporting the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis in Afghanistan. Based on the findings, appropriate policy measures are recommended.

An environmental perspective of energy consumption, overpopulation, and human capital barriers in South Asia.

Prior literature is substantive in highlighting the nexus between pollutant and socio-economic predictors; however, the role of human interaction has not been sufficiently explored. Thus, the present study examines the validity of the environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the presence of energy consumption, overpopulation, and human capital index in five South Asian countries. It employs fixed effects, random effects, and dynamic panel causality techniques with a set of panel data from 1972 to 2021. The baseline results validate the existence of the EKC hypothesis in the recipient panel. Nevertheless, the findings reveal that energy consumption and population density have positive effects, while human capital has negative impacts on CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the study observes that energy consumption and per capita GDP have a significant causal link with CO2 emissions, whereas CO2 emissions are evident to have causality with population density and human capital index. The results are robust and suggest that the consolidation of an effective regulatory framework and technological improvements are substantial measures to improve environmental quality in South Asia. Moreover, allocating sufficient resources to uplift contemporary educational and health status would be imperative to improving environmental quality as aspired to by the Paris Agreement.

A global perspective on the governance-health nexus.

BACKGROUND: This study raises two key arguments: First, government health expenditure (GHE) and per capita out-of-pocket expenditures on healthcare (OPEH) are sensitive to contemporary good governance practices, giving policy importance to the exogeneity of healthcare determinants, i.e., governance for health rather than health governance. Second, it is the income level of countries that reflects the volatility of the governance spillovers on the subject. METHODS: The present study constructs a composite governance index (CGI) and employs a set of panel data for 144 countries over the period from 2002 to 2020. To allow comparability and extract specific policy implications, the countries are classified as full, high-, middle-, and low-income panels. Meanwhile to delve into the short- and long-run effects of CGI on GHE and OPEH, the study employs the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) model. Further, to establish a causal link between the variables, it uses the Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality technique. RESULTS: The results indicate that CGI is significantly cointegrated with GHE and OPEH in all recipient panels. It indicates that while CGI has significantly positive impacts on GHE and OPEH, its effects vary according to the income level of the underlying economies. The findings support the idea of governance for health and show that CGI drives the stabilization and enhancement of GHE and OPEH in the long run. Furthermore, the findings reveal that economic growth, the age dependency ratio, and tax revenue have positive effects, while the crude death rate and the child mortality rate exert negative impacts on the subject. Finally, the results highlight a unidirectional causality running from CGI to GHE and OPEH, while no feedback response is evident. CONCLUSIONS: Although an increase in GHE and OPEH is associated with the improvement of the population's healthcare, the results suggest the recognition of the importance and institutionalization of good governance to streamline this improvement through effective channelization, outreach, and social environment development for extensive health inclusion.

The effect of financial development on environmental quality: a developing country evidence.

Financial development is vital to enhance the inclusive growth of a country in the modern world, and environmental quality, affected by financial development, is also a highly debated topic. Thus, this study attempts to investigate the role of financial development in determining environmental quality in Sri Lanka considering other variables namely economic growth, energy consumption, trade openness, and foreign direct investments. The key econometric tool used for the purpose is the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach with the data from 1992 to 2021. As per the findings, financial development, economic growth, energy consumption, and foreign direct investments adversely impact environmental quality both in the long-run and short-run. Additionally, trade openness established a negative impact in the short-run only. Importantly, the Environmental Kuznets' Curve (EKC) hypothesis and Pollution Haven Hypothesis are established. Finally, all variables except trade openness confirmed a unidirectional causal relationship with environmental quality. This study recommends that all the modelled variables are vital to enrich the environmental quality in Sri Lanka.

Socioeconomic status and health behavior in children and adolescents: a systematic literature review.

Socioeconomic status affects individuals' health behaviors and contributes to a complex relationship between health and development. Due to this complexity, the relationship between SES and health behaviors is not yet fully understood. This literature review, therefore, aims to assess the association between socioeconomic status and health behaviors in childhood and adolescence. Preferred Reporting for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis protocol guidelines were used to conduct a systematic literature review. The electronic online databases EBSCO Host, PubMed, Web of Science, and Science Direct were utilized to systematically search published articles. The Joanna Briggs Institute's critical appeal tool was used to assess the quality of included studies. Eligibility criteria such as study context, study participants, study setting, outcome measures, and key findings were used to identify relevant literature that measured the association between socioeconomic status and health behaviors. Out of 2,391 studies, only 46 met the final eligibility criteria and were assessed in this study. Our review found that children and adolescents with low socioeconomic status face an elevated risk of unhealthy behaviors (e.g., early initiation of smoking, high-energy-dense food, low physical activity, and involvement in drug abuse), in contrast to their counterparts. Conversely, children and adolescents from higher socioeconomic backgrounds exhibit a higher prevalence of health-promoting behaviors, such as increased consumption of fruit and vegetables, dairy products, regular breakfast, adherence to a nutritious diet, and engagement in an active lifestyle. The findings of this study underscore the necessity of implementing specific intervention measures aimed at providing assistance to families from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds to mitigate the substantial disparities in health behavior outcomes in children and adolescents.

Financial development and environmental quality in developed countries: a systematic literature review.

Studying the effect of financial development on environmental quality has become imperative in the modern world due to the climate change challenges. Hence, this systematic literature review provides a comprehensive overview of the existing body of knowledge on the nexus of financial development and environmental quality in developed countries. Three databases: Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar were used to search the relevant articles in this domain. Finally, 20 journal articles qualified for the systematic literature review based on the pre-defined article inclusion criteria as per the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) framework. We found that a range of econometric approaches were used in all examined papers, employing a diverse range of proxy variables to model the relationship between financial development and environmental quality. Overall, the findings of the examined papers imply mixed evidence of this nexus in developed countries. We highlight the knowledge gap in this research domain examining the financial development and environmental quality link from different proxies.

Disaggregated energy consumption, industrialization, total population, and ecological footprint nexus: evidence from the world's top 10 most populous countries.

High population, energy consumption, industrialization, and environmental degradation are inherently linked, making the study of ecological footprints in the most populous countries crucial for understanding their environmental impact and guiding efforts to minimize ecological degradation through sustainable resource management and conservation. Therefore, this study examines the effects of disaggregated energy consumption, industrialization, and total population on the ecological footprint of the world's top 10 most populous countries namely Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, and the USA, using data for the period of 1990-2020. The research employs Kao and Pedroni techniques of cointegration to determine whether the variables are cointegrated in the long run. The long-term equilibrium association is measured utilizing panel autoregressive distributed lag/pooled mean group (ARDL/PMG), and method of moment quantile (MMQ) regression methods. Furthermore, to test for the causal relationships between the selected variables, we used the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (D-H) panel causality method. The findings of the study reveal that renewable energy consumption, as well as GDP square, have a significant negative influence on ecological footprint, implying that renewable energy and GDP square reduce ecological footprint and thus enhance environmental quality. Furthermore, non-renewable energy, industrialization, total population, and GDP have a detrimental impact on environmental quality by increasing ecological footprint. It is also found that there is a one-way causality from non-renewable energy and industrialization to ecological footprint and a bidirectional causal relationship between ecological footprint and total population, GDP, and GDP2. Important policy implications are drawn based on the findings.

Linking governance with environmental quality: a global perspective.

Sustainable environmental quality is a global concern, and a concrete remedy to overcome this challenge is a policy priority. Therefore, this study delves into the subject and examines the effects of governance on environmental quality in 180 countries from 1999 to 2021. To maintain comparability and precision, we first classify countries into full and income-level panels and then, innovatively, construct a composite governance index (CGI) to capture the extensive effects of governance on CO2 emissions. Complementing the stationarity properties of the variables, we employ the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lags model to analyze the data. Our survey yields four key findings. First, a long-run nexus between CGI, CO2 emissions, and other control variables is confirmed. Second, the findings indicate that CGI is crucial to improving environmental quality by reducing CO2 emissions across all panels. Third, we find that while CGI maintains a similar magnitude, the size of its effects substantially varies according to the income level of the underlying countries. Fourth, the findings reveal that energy consumption, population growth rate, trade openness, and urbanization contribute to environmental degradation, while financial development and the human development index are significant in reducing CO2 emissions. Our findings suggest specific policy implications, summing up that one common policy is not a good fit for all environmental quality measures.

Individual preferences, government policy, and COVID-19: A game-theoretic epidemiological analysis.

Purpose: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic imposes serious short-term and long-term health costs on populations. Restrictive government policy measures decrease the risks of infection, but produce similarly serious social, mental health, and economic problems. Citizens have varying preferences about the desirability of restrictive policies, and governments are thus forced to navigate this tension in making pandemic policy. This paper analyses the situation facing government using a game-theoretic epidemiological model. Methodology: We classify individuals into health-centered individuals and freedom-centered individuals to capture the heterogeneous preferences of citizens. We first use the extended Susceptible-Exposed-Asymptomatic-Infectious-Recovered (SEAIR) model (adding individual preferences) and the signaling game model (adding government) to analyze the strategic situation against the backdrop of a realistic model of COVID-19 infection. Findings: We find the following: 1. There exists two pooling equilibria. When health-centered and freedom-centered individuals send anti-epidemic signals, the government will adopt strict restrictive policies under budget surplus or balance. When health-centered and freedom-centered individuals send freedom signals, the government chooses not to implement restrictive policies. 2. When governments choose not to impose restrictions, the extinction of an epidemic depends on whether it has a high infection transmission rate; when the government chooses to implement non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs), whether an epidemic will disappear depends on how strict the government's restrictions are. Originality/value: Based on the existing literature, we add individual preferences and put the government into the game as a player. Our research extends the current form of combining epidemiology and game theory. By using both we get a more realistic understanding of the spread of the virus and combine that with a richer understanding of the strategic social dynamics enabled by game theoretic analysis. Our findings have important implications for public management and government decision-making in the context of COVID-19 and for potential future public health emergencies.

Are environmental damage and export concentration the major threats for the long-run economic growth in Bangladesh?

Using World Bank and IMF data over the period 1990-2018, this research explores the determinants of economic growth in Bangladesh with particular attention to environmental degradation and export concentration variables. An ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag) bound testing approach is employed as an estimation strategy with FMOLS (Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares) and CCR (Canonical Cointegrating Regression) for cross-checking the results. The obtained results confirm that CO2 emissions, consumption expenditure, export concentration, remittances, and inflation are the main driving forces for the long-run economic growth in Bangladesh where the effects of the first two variables and the last three variables are positive and negative, respectively. The study also reveals the dynamic short-run relationships among the chosen variables. Environmental pollution and export concentration are found to be the barriers to economic growth; therefore, the country should take necessary steps to mitigate this problem for ensuring long-run sustainable economic development.

Food insecurity and health outcome nexus: empirical evidence from the informal sector enterprises in Bangladesh.

BACKGROUND: Food insecurity indicates the difficulty of constantly obtaining adequate food because of limited economic resources. Food insecurity challenges the desired health outcomes. Although extensive literature has examined the associations between food security and health, low-wage informal sector workers have been less frequently addressed in this topic. The present study has focused on food insecurity among the workers working in the informal sector enterprises who experienced entrenched disadvantage during COVID-19 and examines the relationship between food insecurity and health status as measured by self-reported physical and mental health conditions. METHODS: This study has utilized cross-sectional data collected from workers working in informal manufacturing and business enterprises in Dhaka city of Bangladesh. The Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) with eight items is used to screen for food insecurity, and the Short Form 12v2 (SF12v2) scale with 12 questions, and validated for use with Bengali respondents, is used to measure the health status of the informal workers. A health production function has been constructed where the health status (both physical and mental) of workers is associated with food insecurity and other socio-economic and health care factors. Empirical analyses of the study have included descriptive statistics, mean score comparisons, and multivariate regression analyses to identify the predictive factors of the physical and mental health status of the workers. RESULTS: A moderate to severe food insecurity is found to be responsible for the poor health status (both physical and mental) of the selected working group population. Moreover, age over 40 years, having a large family, dissatisfaction with the work place, and the prevalence of occupational health risks are linked to lower physical health, while dissatisfaction with the work place and the incidence of severe diseases contribute to poor mental health status along with food insecurity. CONCLUSIONS: Extending social and economic protection towards health coverage and basic consumption is suggested as an immediate action to save lives and ensure productivity of the informal workers. Besides, an increase in income and ensuring decent working conditions are also recommended for the health, safety and satisfaction of workers working in informal sector enterprises.

Investigating the prospect of cleaner production in informal enterprises: A scientific assessment of environmental burdens and economic efficiency.

The present study aims to assess the prospects for cleaner production (CP) and sustainable development (SD) of informally operated small manufacturing enterprises, which are frequently blamed for uncontrolled waste disposal and causing pollution to the environment. The economic efficiency level of these firms has been explored to this end, and the metallic pollution loads in the surrounding environment have been scientifically analyzed to investigate the nexus between these two. DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis)-Tobit analysis has been employed, and a pollution load index (PLI) of heavy metal pollution comprising two environmental compartments (soil and water) has been constructed based on the concentration level of metalloid pollutants in the samples collected from the surrounding areas of the studied informal firms in Bangladesh. The study disproves CP practice in majority of the informal firms in Bangladesh by observing a positive relationship between firm-level efficiency and pollution load sourced from their production activities. Afterwards, this study estimates the eco-efficiency level of firms by considering pollution load as an undesirable output and minimizing its impact in an input-oriented DEA model. Applying the eco-efficiency scores in censored Tobit regression analysis, the outcome endorses the prospect of CP for informally operated enterprises in Bangladesh. However, the CP prospect can only materialize if and only if firms are provided with adequate technical, financial, and strategic support for achieving eco-efficiency in their production. The informal and marginal nature of the studied firms restricts them from getting access to the facilities and support services needed for implementing CP and moving towards sustainable manufacturing. Therefore, this study recommends green practices in informal manufacturing and limiting the informal firms by bringing them gradually under the coverage of formalization, which is in line with the achievement of the targets mentioned in Sustainable Development Goal 8.

The health consequences of civil wars: evidence from Afghanistan.

This study examines the effects of long-run civil wars on healthcare, which is an important component of human capital development and their causality nexus in Afghanistan using the MVAR (modified vector autoregressive) approach and the Granger non-causality model covering data period 2002Q3-2020Q4. The primary results support a significant long-run relationship between variables, while the results of the MVAR model indicate the per capita cost of war, per capita GDP, and age dependency ratio have significantly positive impacts on per capita health expenditures, whereas child mortality rate and crude death rate have negative impacts. The results of the Granger non-causality approach demonstrate that there is a statistically significant bidirectional causality nexus between per capita health expenditure, per capita cost of war, per capita GDP, child mortality rate, crude death rate, and age dependency ratio, while it also supports the existence of strong and significant interconnectivity and multidimensionality between per capita cost of war and per capita health expenditure, with a significantly strong feedback response from the control variables. Important policy implications sourced from the key findings are also discussed.

The Role of Socio-economic and Female Indicators on Child Mortality Rate in Bangladesh: A Time Series Analysis.

This study aims to identify the role of socio-economic and female indicators on child mortality in Bangladesh from the data of 1975 - 2019. A number of econometric techniques of time series analysis like Augmented Dickey-Fuller, Autoregressive Distributive Lag bounds and pair-wise Granger causality tests have been applied to ascertain the desired outcomes. The Augmented Dickey-Fuller test has confirmed that neither series is integrated at level two and the Autoregressive Distributive Lag bounds testing approach has shown the cointegration and short-run and long-run relationship between the variables. Total fertility rate and urbanization have a positive effect, and female education, female life expectancy at birth, and economic growth rate have a negative effect on the child mortality rate. The pair-wise Granger causality test has shown the unidirectional and bidirectional causal relationship among the studied variables. All the outcomes are theoretically consistent and the policy recommendations are made based on findings.

Socioeconomic inequalities in teenage pregnancy in Nigeria: evidence from Demographic Health Survey.

BACKGROUND: Despite the high rate of teenage pregnancy in Nigeria and host of negative medical, social and economic consequences that are associated with the problem, relatively few studies have examined socioeconomic inequality in teenage pregnancy. Understanding the key factors associated with socioeconomic inequality in teenage pregnancy is essential in designing effective policies for teenage pregnancy reduction. This study focuses on measuring inequality and identifying factors explaining socioeconomic inequality in teenage pregnancy in Nigeria. METHODS: This is a cross sectional study using individual recode (data) file from the 2018 Nigeria Demographic Health Survey. The dataset comprises a representative sample of 8,423 women of reproductive age 15 - 19 years in Nigeria. The normalized Concentration index (Cn) was used to determine the magnitude of inequalities in teenage pregnancy. The Cn was decomposed to determine the contribution of explanatory factors to socioeconomic inequalities in teenage pregnancy in Nigeria. RESULTS: The negative value of the Cn (-0.354; 95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.400 to -0.308) suggests that pregnancy is more concentrated among the poor teenagers. The decomposition analysis identified marital status, wealth index of households, exposure to information and communication technology, and religion as the most important predictors contributing to observed concentration of teenage pregnancy in Nigeria. CONCLUSION: There is a need for targeted intervention to reduce teenage pregnancy among low socioeconomic status women in Nigeria. The intervention should break the intergenerational cycle of low socioeconomic status that make teenagers' susceptible to unintended pregnancy. Economic empowerment is recommended, as empowered girls are better prepared to handle reproductive health issues. Moreover, religious bodies, parents and schools should provide counselling, and guidance that will promote positive reproductive and sexual health behaviours to teenagers.

Effects of globalization, energy consumption and ICT on health status in Australia: the role of financial development and education.

BACKGROUND: The outbreak of COVID-19 has alerted governments around the world, including Australia, to think seriously about the health issues. Life expectancy is one of such issues. Therefore, this study tries to reveal the effects of globalization, energy consumption, information and communication technology, financial development, education rate, and economic growth on life expectancy at birth in Australia. METHODS: Using the data period of 1990-2018, a series of econometric techniques: the Dickey-Fuller generalized least square test, Autoregressive Distributive Lag bounds test, fully modified ordinary least square method and the pairwise Granger causality test, are applied. RESULTS: The findings disclose that globalization, renewable energy use, information and communication technology, per capita gross domestic product, education rate, and financial development increased during this period but non-renewable energy use reduced life expectancy at birth. Unidirectional causal associations of the studied variables with life expectancy at birth are also revealed. CONCLUSIONS: All the outcomes are relevant and useful for articulating an innovative policy in the health sector. The prime policy implication of this work is: the effective, efficient, and inclusive policies considering globalization, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, information and communication technology, financial development, education rate, and economic growth should be formulated and executed for guaranteeing health status.

Assessing the asymmetric war-growth nexus: A case of Afghanistan.

This study explores the war-growth nexus in Afghanistan, a country where war-torn acts inform resource allocation. Employing the asymmetric ARDL, dynamic multipliers, and asymmetric causality techniques, the initial results confirm the existence of a long-run asymmetric nexus amid predictors. The asymmetric ARDL results indicate that a positive asymmetric shock from the per capita cost of war reduces per capita GDP-that is, economic growth-while a negative asymmetric shock from the per capita cost of war increases growth in the short and long run. Moreover, the findings reveal that per capita capital investment, per capita energy consumption, per capita household consumption, per capita remittance, per capita foreign direct investment, population growth, and inflation rate have significantly asymmetric effects on growth, highlighting non-monotonic impacts in scale and magnitude. The results of the asymmetric causality technique by bootstrap confirm that there is an asymmetric bidirectional causality between growth, per capita cost of war, per capita household consumption, per capita capital investment, and per capita foreign direct investment, while expanding only unidirectional causality with per capita remittance, population growth, and inflation rate. Based on the findings, the study concludes by offering relevant policy recommendations.