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Life Expectancy at Birth and Its Socioeconomic Determinants: An Application of Random Forest Algorithm

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Algorithms as a Basis of Modern Applied Mathematics

Part of the book series: Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing ((STUDFUZZ,volume 404))

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is the analysis of the socioeconomic determinants of life expectancy at birth in European countries from 2000 to 2017 by using not only “traditional” variables such as per capita income and education but also sociocultural differences and public expenditure on social protection. The methodology employed in this chapter is Random Forest algorithm to measure the importance of certain variables which are related to life expectancy at birth. Our findings conclude that the variables with the greatest relative importance in explaining life expectancy at birth are per capita income, the variable “Area” (representative of the sociocultural differences between Eastern and the rest of European countries), the educational level of the population, and public expenditure on social protection. Contrarily, the least important variables are inflation, public environmental expenditure and unemployment. These results highlight the importance of public expenditure on social protection in the composition of public budget in order to reach health outcomes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Economía y Empresa, Universidad de Almería, Almería, Spain

    Pedro Antonio Martín Cervantes, Nuria Rueda López & Salvador Cruz Rambaud

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  1. Pedro Antonio Martín Cervantes
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  2. Nuria Rueda López
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  3. Salvador Cruz Rambaud
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Correspondence to Salvador Cruz Rambaud .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Military Technology, University of Defence, Brno, Czech Republic

    Šárka Hošková-Mayerová

  2. Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Ovidius University, Constanta, Romania

    Cristina Flaut

  3. Department of Mathematics and Physics, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Caserta, Italy

    Fabrizio Maturo

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 4 and Fig. 6

Table 4 Life expectancy at birth performance along the analyzed period
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Fig. 6
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Variables correlation plot

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Martín Cervantes, P.A., Rueda López, N., Cruz Rambaud, S. (2021). Life Expectancy at Birth and Its Socioeconomic Determinants: An Application of Random Forest Algorithm. In: Hošková-Mayerová, Š., Flaut, C., Maturo, F. (eds) Algorithms as a Basis of Modern Applied Mathematics. Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing, vol 404. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61334-1_19

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