Chloe Becker

Pre-Calc
Kiker 2
September 3, 2014

The Regression Project: GDP and Life Expectancy

Do you ever wonder how long you will live? Or how your life span could be
related to how much money you have? Life expectancy can be affected by many factors,
one of which includes GDP (Gross Domestic Product) that, put simply, represents the size
of a countrys economy. Other factors such as health care availability, adequate sanitation
and access to clean water impact life expectancy as well but are also affected themselves
by GDP. This being the case, I thought GDP and life expectancy would be closely tied
and wanted to find out how related they actually are. One person that would benefit from
understanding this kind of information is a political leader. It is important for them to
recognize the relationship between GDP and life expectancy in order for them to
understand how their countrys economy impacts its citizens lives.
This relationship would also be important for an economic analyst to understand.
Economic analysts create recommendations, policies and plans to solve economic issues,
so its important for them to be able to see how peoples literall lives are tied to the
economy. Another person who would benefit from understanding the relationship
between GDP and life expectancy is a sociologist. Sociologists that study socioeconomics
would look at how the economy and society interact so its important for them to see the
relation between the two factors. Both the carreers mentioned are relevant in todays
society because money is such a massive part of our lives. Money is how we access
healthcare, clean water, good homes and other variables that affect our overall wellbeing
and health as humans; this in turn affects our life span. It is important for our society to

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have people that work as economic analysts and sociologists so we can understand the
relationship between GDP and our life expectancy.
It turns out my two variables, GDP and life expectancy, did not have as much
correlation as I expected. The regression equation that best fit my data was the power
function ( f ( x )=x n ):

f ( x )=62.175 x .0311 . The slope of my equation (as seen in the

graph below) begins by increasing exponentialy and then slowly leveling out. The yintercept tells us that at a GDP of 0, life expectancy is about 67 years. Unfortunately,
even for the best fit equation, the r 2 value was still extremely low at .3872. The low
r

value means that the power function only represents about 38.7% of variation in

my data; in other words, there would not be much accuracy when trying to predict future
values. Three points I was able to predict using my regression equation were as follows:

( 6000, 81.49 ) , ( 12000, 83.27 ) and ( 2000,78.76 ) .

GDP v. Average life expectancy

90
80

f(x) = 62.18 x^0.03

R = 0.39

70
60
50
Average life expectancy

Power ()

40
30
20
10
0
0

5000

10000 15000 20000

GDP (Billions)

In conclusion, my two variables, GDP and life expectancy were not as related as I
originally thought. This is shown through a very small r 2 value that represents a low
correlation between the two variables. The low correlation is most likely because there
are so many factors affecting life expectancy, some of which are out of our control
(genetic diseases for example). If you were to somehow compare multiple variables to
life expectancy, chances are the correlation would be a lot higher. So, if your countrys
GDP is low, dont worry, its not the single determinant of your expected life span.

Works Cited
The World Factbook. "Country Comparison: Life expectancy at birth. "Central
Intelligence Agency. Central Intelligence Agency, n.d. Web. 26 Aug. 2014.
WEO. "International Monetary Fund. "World Economic Outlook Database April 2014.
IMF, n.d. Web. 26 Aug. 2014.