Health, Human Productivity, and Long-Term Economic Growth

This article investigates the influence of health on the growth paths of ten industrialized countries over the course of 100 to 125 years. Changes in health increased their pace of growth by 30 to 40 percent, altering permanently the slope of their growth paths. This finding is robust across five measures of long-term health and it remains largely unchanged when “controlled” for investment in physical capital. Health-related variables correlate positively with years of schooling. However, schooling variables by themselves do not replicate the results obtained from health-related measures. Health improvements thus do not merely follow economic progress.