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October 19, 2005
Health and Economic Growth: Findings and Policy Implications
Editors: Guillem López-Casasnovas, Berta Rivera and Luis Currais
ISBN: 0-262-12276-6
Publisher: The MIT Press
Price: $45.00/£29.95 (CLOTH)
August 2005, 6 x 9, 400 pp., 30 illus.
Book listing at MIT Press website
Guillem López-Casasnovas is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center of Research in Economics and Health at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona.
Berta Rivera is Associate Professor of Economics at the University A Coruña in Spain and Research Associate at the Center of Research in Economics and Health at Pompeu Fabra University.
Luis Currais is Associate Professor of Economics at the University A Coruña in Spain and Research Associate at the Center of Research in Economics and Health at Pompeu Fabra University.
Contributors: Harold Alderman, Suchit Arora, Jere R. Behrman, David Bloom, Luis Currais, John Hoddinott, Peter Howitt, Dean T. Jamison, Lawrence J. Lau, Guillem López-Casasnovas, David Mayer-Foulkes, Edward Miguel, Olivier Morand, Joan Muysken, Tomas J. Philipson, Berta Rivera, Xavier Sala-i-Martín, T. Paul Schultz, Jaypee Sevilla, Rodrigo R. Soares, Jia Wang, Adriaan van Zon
Contents
- Introduction: The Role Health Plays in Economic Growth
Guillem López-Casasnovas, Berta Rivera and Luis Currais - Health, Human Capital, and Economic Growth: A Schumpeterian Perspective
Peter Howitt - Health as Principal Determinant of Economic Growth
Adriaan van Zon and Joan Muysken - Health’s Contribution to Economic Growth in an Environment of Partially Endogenous Technical Progress
Dean T. Jamison, Lawrence J. Lau and Jia Wang - On the Health-Poverty Trap
Xavier Sala-i-Martin - Human Development Traps and Economic Growth
David Mayer-Foulkes - Health, Education, and Economic Development
Edward Miguel - Nutrition, Malnutrition, and Economic Growth
Harold Alderman, Jere R. Behrman and John Hoddinott - On Epidemiologic and Economic Transitions: A Historical View
Suchit Arora - Economic Growth, Health, and Longevity in the Very Long Term: Facts and Mechanisms
Olivier F. Morand - Productivity, Labor Markets, and Health
- Productive Benefits of Health: Evidence from Low-Income Countries
T. Paul Schultz - Individual Returns to Health in Brazil: A Quantile Regression Analysis
Berta Rivera and Luis Currais - Quantity of Life and the Welfare Costs of AIDS
- The Economic Cost of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Reassessment
Tomas J. Philipson and Rodrigo R. Soares
Scope: While human capital is a clear determinant of economic growth, only recently has health’s role in this process become a focus of serious academic inquiry. By marrying the separate fields of health economics and growth theory, this groundbreaking book explores the explicit mechanisms by which a population’s individual and collective health status affects a nation’s economic development and performance. International leaders from both fields have contributed original essays that employ theoretical and empirical perspectives on the relationship between health and economic growth, including the relevant interconnections with investment in education, family planning, and productivity.
Each of the book’s five sections deals with a different aspect of this dynamic. These include the channels through which health human capital generates both higher income and individual well-being; the impact of health on long-run development, economic growth, and poverty reduction; the link between human capital levels and fertility and mortality rates, with models that analyze demographic and epidemiological transitions; the quantitative effect of better health on labor productivity and wages; and, finally, the devastating effects of AIDS — in underdeveloped countries the most deadly, most economically adverse, and the surest barrier to growth — on individual well-being and populations, and the prospects for incentives for developing new treatments. A concluding chapter integrates the different microeconomic and macrodynamic analyses and draws some policy conclusions for future study.
