Acemoglu and Johnson (2007) present evidence that improvements in population health do not promote economic growth. We show that their result depends critically on the assumption that initial health has no causal effect on subsequent economic growth. We argue that such an effect is likely,...

Acemoglu and Johnson (2007) present evidence that improvements in population health do not promote economic growth. We show that their result depends critically on the assumption that initial health has no causal effect on subsequent economic growth. We argue that such an effect is likely,...

We explore the proposition that expected longevity affects retirement decisions and accumulated wealth using micro data drawn from the Health and Retirement Study for the United States. We use data on a person’s subjective probability of survival to age 75 as a proxy for their prospective...

There is increasing evidence that early childhood health interventions have long term effects on cognitive development, educational achievement, and adult productivity. We examine the effect of measles vaccination on the school enrollment of children in Matlab, Bangladesh. An intensive measles...

Health is a key component of human development. This paper looks at how health is measured, and the convergence of health across countries. We argue that health measures should account for illness as well as mortality, but in practice life expectancy as a reasonably proxy for population health....

In a recent paper, Acemoglu and Johnson (2007) argue that the large increases in population health witnessed in the 20th century may have lowered income levels. We argue that this result depends crucially on their assumption that initial health and income do not affect subsequent economic...

This study uses the second National Family Health Survey (NFHS-2) of India to estimate the effect of state public health spending on mortality across all age groups, controlling for individual, household, and state-level covariates. We use a state’s gross fiscal deficit as an instrument for...

Welfare economics, in the form of cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis, is at present internally inconsistent and ethically unappealing. We address these issues by proposing two ethical axioms: society prefers Pareto improvements and society values lives lived at a "standard" level of...