The Impact of Natural Resources Economic’s Dependence and Institutional Quality on Health in Iran (A Comparison Between Several Developed and Developing Oil Exporting Countries)

The abundance of natural resources in a country is considered a blessing and led to increased growth and development, but in others it has appeared as a disaster and led to a decrease in investment in sectors such as health as an important factor of economic growth and rights, but in others it has appeared as a curse of resources and led to a decrease in investment in sectors such as health as an important factor of economic growth and rights. The present article uses the Autoregressive-Distributed Lag (ARDL) method to investigate the effect of oil dependence on life expectancy index as a health index in Iran during the period 1984-2017. The results showed that in the long run, the effect of oil rents as an indicator of dependence on natural resources on life expectancy in Iran has been inversed U-shaped. In other words, to a certain extent, the rent of oil resources has had a positive effect on life expectancy, but with the increase of dependence on oil resources, this effect has become negative. Then, to analyze the effect of institutional quality on the relationship between dependence on oil resources and health outcomes, the estimation results for Iran with three developing countries with poor institutional quality including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait, and three developed countries with strong institutional quality Norway, Canada and the United States were compared. The results showed that in countries with poor institutional quality, the relationship between oil rents and life expectancy is the same as in Iran, but in countries with strong institutional quality, oil rents have been ineffective on life expectancy. Therefore, the degree of development and institutional quality of the country is effective in turning oil rents into a blessing or a calamity.