Impact of Environmental Quality on Health Outcomes in Saudi Arabia: Does Research and Development Matter?

Recent literature on the health impacts of CO2 emissions suggests a variety of factors that may establish a more robust link. However, no previous study has explored the role of research and development (R&D) in explaining the nexus between CO2 emissions and health outcomes. Using data for Saudi Arabia over the period 2000–2018, this paper investigates the ability of R&D (expenditures and environmentally related R&D) to reduce the incidence of emissions on population health outcomes, particularly infant mortality and life expectancy. We find (i) negative impacts of CO2 emissions on health outcomes; (ii) R&D expenditures have a weak positive impact on health outcomes; (iii) additionally to their direct effects on health outcomes, R&D expenditures remarkably enhanced health outcomes through reducing per capita CO2 emissions; (iv) R&D expenditures interact with CO2 from electricity and heat production and from electricity and heat production to negatively influence health outcomes. Similarly, environmentally related R&D, measured by patents environmental-related technologies, interacts with per capita CO2 emissions to negatively influence health outcomes. To address these negative impacts, we calculated the corresponding R&D thresholds. Policymakers in Saudi Arabia are therefore called to give more and more incentives for R&D to reduce emissions and then improve population health outcomes.