Longevity, Capital Formation and Economic Development

Many researchers have concluded that longer life expectancies prompt increased investment in education,as a prolonged labor supply raises the rate of return on education.Besides explaining the empirical evidence behind this conclusion(at an absolute level),there is another issue to be discussed:does time spent studying and working increase proportionally with higher longevity? Building on an extended life-cycle model,this paper shows that prolonged life expectancy will cause individuals to increase their time in education but may not warrant rises in labor input.Later we show that higher improvement rate of longevity rather than initial life expectancy will promote economic growth,even we exclude the mechanism of human capital formation,and only consider growth effects of higher improvement rate of life expectancy from physical capital investment.