The Causality between Relative Poverty and Age and Gender-Specific Mortality: Evidence from G7

Income distribution is one of the key determinants of population health. Associations between population mortality rates and income inequality have been reported in numerous papers comparing data from both developed and developing countries, from areas within countries, cross-sectionally and overtime. In this study, it is analyzed the possibility of a causal relationship between population mortality by age and gender and income inequality for G7 countries over the period 1970–2010. Taking into account both the cross-sectional dependence and the heterogeneity and using the non-causality test developed by Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012), the empirical results of the study showed that there were unidirectional causal relationships from income inequality to population mortality for both male and female at the ages below 50.