Since the Second World War the world has seen an economic growth spurt unprecedented in history. Economic growth is a necessary but not sufficient condition for improving human development, or in other words, economic growth is an important pre-requisite for the ultimate goal of human...

Eine ausreichend gute Ernährung stellt einen Grundpfeiler für die Formation von Humankapital da. Nur ein gut ernährtes und gesundes Kind wird regelmäßig zur Schule gehen, auf die Einflüsse seiner Umwelt adäquate reagieren und genug lernen um gute Bildungsergebnisse zu erzielen....

This book contributes to the empirical literature on economic and human development from five different perspectives: the first chapter provides a new statistical test for bimodality of densities with an application to income data. The second chapter analyzes the worlds cross-country...

For more than a hundred years, advances in development were associated with decreasing fertility rates. This led to total fertility rates far below replacement level in most developed countries. However, during the last decade fertility rates started to increase again in various developed...

The purpose of this dissertation is to address policy makers to change the way they think about increasing obesity rates. So far the discussion revolves around increasing incomes and imposing taxes on high fat food, despite their disputed effectiveness. Most of these studies seem to neglect the...