Exploring the Relationship between Economic Development and Road Traffic Fatalities in Iran: a Negative Binomial Regression Approach

Road traffic fatalities are a major problem for the whole world. This problem is very well-known for the Iranian society. In this paper we would like to examine the relationship between road traffic fatalities and economic development indicators in Iran during 2005-2008 for 30 Iranian provinces. Many papers have been devoted to study this subject in both developed and developing countries. These papers concluded that at the very beginning stages of development, road traffic fatalities increase, but decline once income levels have exceeded a certain threshold level. This phenomenon resembles the Kuznets curve (1955) that explained income inequality and per capita income. Later on this idea has been expanded to explain the relationship between road traffic fatalities and economic growth which is known as inverted U shape Kuznets Curve. In this study we use panel data for 30 Iranian provinces and use Random Effects for Negative Binomial Regression to estimate the model. Our results confirm that there is indeed an inverted U shape relationship between economic growth and road traffic fatalities in Iran, and there is positive relationship between income inequality and road traffic fatalities in Iran.