This paper investigates the role of forests in the life expectancy of people in Ghana. We test whether the extinction of forests will inevitably lead to extinction of people in Ghana. We first examined the causal relationship between life expectancy and deforestation using the full sample bootstrap Granger causality test approach and find causality to run from deforestation to life expectancy with no feedback from life expectancy to deforestation. Testing for parameter stability, we found the short run and long run parameters of the estimated Vector Auto Regressive models to be unstable. A time-varying approach, the rolling window bootstrapped Granger causality test was then employed to investigate the causal relationship between life expectancy and deforestation. The results showed that deforestation has a negative effect on life expectancy, confirming the widely accepted saying that the health of forests is inextricably linked to the health of mankind. The empirical results further show that, on trend higher life expectancy increases the rate of deforestation in Ghana. Highlighting the importance of the role of forests in influencing life expectancy in Ghana, we recommend awareness creation on the role of forests in supporting human life and also extensive afforestation programs to reduce the rate of deforestation in Ghana. This, we believe, will reduce the spread of vector borne diseases such as malaria and reduce the surge in respiratory diseases which shorten the life span of Ghanaians.
JEL codes
Q23, Q50, Q53, Q58, Q58