Does the electricity consumption influence the life expectancy? Formulation of the problem

This blog was created in order to complete the assignments in Data Visualization course.

Topics of interests and selection of the dataset.

After looking through the codebooks, I have decided that I am particularly interested in life expectancy associations fixed in the GapMinder studies.

At now I am not sure which variables I will use regarding longevity (e.g. economic or social structure measures), so for now I will include all of the relevant variables in my personal codebook.

While life expectancy is a good starting point, I need to determine what it is about longevity that I am interested in. I think the life expectancy is dependent on many parameters, and major of them can say something about quality of life. I believe that in the modern society (industrial and post-industrial) things that makes our life better are associated with electricity consumption.

Research Question.

I decide that I am most interested in exploring the association between the amount of residential electricity consumption per person and life expectancy.

In order to observe longevity dependencies in the social aspects I add to my codebook variables reflecting other indicators of "good life" such as alcohol consumption and mortality due to self-inflicted injury.

The secondary questions are: Is there an association between life expectancy and suicide rate? Between alcohol consumption and longevity?

Literature Review.

The association between energy consumption and quality of life was explored in 2011 by Allan Mazur in his work "Does increasing energy or electricity consumption improve quality of life in industrial nations?" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421511001042). He concluded that "additional energy and electricity consumption causes improvements in life quality".

Summary.

I hope to explore the association between electricity consumption and only one of the indicators of good life - life expectancy - but among all of the countries - not only industrial.