Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / Life expectancy in South African has been fluctuating following the global trends that affects both developed and developing countries. In South Africa the average life expectancy from 1994 to 1996 was higher with an average of 61,3 years. As from 1997 to 1999 it declined to an average of 58,4 years. The difference in years between 1994-1996 and 1997- 1999 was 2,9 years. From 2000-2002, life expectancy continued to decline to an average of 54,6 years. Life expectancy declined in a constant proportion from 2003-2005 and 2006-2008. In 2003-2005 it slightly declined to 52 years and in 2004-2007 it declined to 42,0 years. Life expectancy escalated after the mentioned years to 54,4 years between 2009-2011 and from 2012-2013 life expectancy was 54,0 years on average. This study examined factors or variables that verify the socioeconomic determinants of life expectancy in post-apartheid South Africa. Understanding the relationship between life expectancy and the socioeconomic variables was based on three objectives. The main objective for this study was to determine the impact of socioeconomic variables and health policy efforts on life expectancy, seeking an in-depth understanding by investigating the causality relationship between life expectancy and socioeconomic variables thus later investigating the difference between male and female’s life expectancy. This study was motivated by the fluctuating life expectancy in South Africa. The fluctuation in life expectancy were thus studied in relation to socioeconomic determinants which are government health expenditure, government education expenditure, GDP per capita, total fertility rate, urban population, access to sustainable drinking water and undernourishment. The mentioned variables were used as socioeconomic determinants of life expectancy during post-apartheid South Africa.

In this paper we use the long-term empirical relationship among primary energy consumption, real income, physical capital, population and technology, obtained by averaged panel error correction models, to project the long-term primary energy consumption of 56 countries up to 2100. In forecasting long-term primary energy consumption, we work with four different Shared Socioeconomic Pathway Scenarios (SSPs) developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) framework, assuming different challenges to adaptation and mitigation. We find that in all scenarios, China, the United States and India will be the largest energy consumers, while highly growing countries will also significantly contribute to energy use. We observe for most scenarios a sharp increase in global energy consumption, followed by a levelling-out and a decrease towards the second half of the century. The reasons behind this pattern are not only slower population growth, but also infrastructure saturation and increased total factor productivity. This means, as countries move towards more knowledge based societies, and higher energy efficiency, their primary energy usage is likely to decrease as a result. Global primary energy consumption is expected however to increase significantly in the coming decades, thus increasing the pressure on policy makers to cope with the questions of energy security and greenhouse gas mitigation at the same time. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series