How much of cross-country income variation is explained by health?

Arbeitspapier

We use development accounting techniques to assess the contribution of health to differences in income per capita among countries. Rather than rely on regressions in aggregate data, we build up estimates of the effect of health starting from microeconomic data. We examine both a particular condition, anemia, and a proxy for general health, the adult survival rate. We find that differences in anemia explain 1.3% of the log variance of income per capita, and that differences in adult survival explain 19% of the log variance of income per capita. The latter figure is almost one-third of the variation in output that is left unexplained by other measures of factor accumulation.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Paper ; No. 2003-08

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: Einkommensverteilung ; Sozialprodukt ; Gesundheit ; Welt

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Shastry, Gauri Kartini ; Weil, David N.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Brown University, Department of Economics
• (where): Providence, RI
• (when): 2003

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/80159
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET