Section I of this chapter briefly reviews the literature on medical spending, which suggests that health expenditures began small but steadily increased throughout history (from 1 percent to 4 percent of GDP), then began to increase rapidly among wealthier developed countries after 1950. Section...

In this paper, I introduce depression to the economics of human health and aging. Based on studies from happiness research, depression is conceptualized as a drastic loss of utility and value of life (life satisfaction) for unchanged fundamentals. The model is used to explain how untreated...