IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ris/ecoint/0008.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health, Economic Development, and Poverty in Developing Countries

Author

Listed:

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of health on the extent of poverty and on economic development in developing countries. Based on data from the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme and using a sample of seventy-nine developing economies, we find that the fraction of the population below the poverty line is linearly dependent upon the GDP growth rate, the share of income or consumption by the lowest quintile of the population, and male life expectancy at birth used as a proxy for the possible effect of improved health. Using another sample of sixty-two developing countries, we find that purchasing power parity per capita income linearly depends on the total fertility rate, labor force participation, child illness and malnutrition, gross capital formation, and access to natural resources and the global economy as proxied by per capita arable and permanent cropland and by external balance of goods and services as a percentage of GDP. Statistical results of such empirical examination will assist governments in developing countries identify health care areas that need to be improved upon in order to alleviate poverty and foster economic development.

Suggested Citation

  • Dao, Minh Quang, 2009. "Health, Economic Development, and Poverty in Developing Countries," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 62(2), pages 163-174.
  • Handle: RePEc:ris:ecoint:0008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iei1946.it/RePEc/ccg/DAO%20163_174.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alok Bhargava & Dean T. Jamison & Lawrence J. Lau & Christopher J. L. Murray, 2006. "Modeling the effects of health on economic growth," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Econometrics, Statistics And Computational Approaches In Food And Health Sciences, chapter 20, pages 269-286, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Don Webber, 2002. "Policies to stimulate growth: should we invest in health or education?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(13), pages 1633-1643.
    3. David E. BLOOM & Jocelyn E. FINLAY, 2009. "Demographic Change and Economic Growth in Asia," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 4(1), pages 45-64, June.
    4. Bloom, David E. & Canning, David & Sevilla, Jaypee, 2004. "The Effect of Health on Economic Growth: A Production Function Approach," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 1-13, January.
    5. Arora, Suchit, 2001. "Health, Human Productivity, And Long-Term Economic Growth," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(3), pages 699-749, September.
    6. Robert J. Barro, 1998. "Determinants of Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262522543, April.
    7. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Pia N. Malaney, 1999. "Demographic Change and Economic Growth in Asia," CID Working Papers 15, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    8. Easterly, William, 1999. "Life during Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 239-276, September.
    9. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson, 2007. "Disease and Development: The Effect of Life Expectancy on Economic Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(6), pages 925-985, December.
    10. Thomas, Duncan & Strauss, John, 1997. "Health and wages: Evidence on men and women in urban Brazil," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 159-185, March.
    11. World Bank, 2007. "World Development Indicators 2007," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 8150.
    12. Strauss, John & Thomas, Duncan, 1995. "Human resources: Empirical modeling of household and family decisions," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Hollis Chenery & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 1883-2023, Elsevier.
    13. David Bloom & David Canning, 2003. "The Health and Poverty of Nations: From theory to practice," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 47-71.
    14. Robert William Fogel, 1990. "The Conquest of High Mortality and Hunger in Europe and America: Timing and Mechanisms," NBER Historical Working Papers 0016, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. repec:bla:ecorec:v:73:y:1997:i:223:p:314-28 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Husain, Muhammad Jami, 2010. "Contribution of health to economic development: A survey and overview," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 4, pages 1-52.
    2. Masagus M. Ridhwan & Peter Nijkamp & Affandi Ismail & Luthfi M.Irsyad, 2022. "The effect of health on economic growth: a meta-regression analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(6), pages 3211-3251, December.
    3. Nadide Halıcı-Tülüce & İbrahim Doğan & Cüneyt Dumrul, 2016. "Is income relevant for health expenditure and economic growth nexus?," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 23-49, March.
    4. Mine Yilmazer & Serkan inar, 2015. "Human Capabilities and Economic Growth: A Comparative Human Capability Index," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 5(4), pages 843-853.
    5. Gazi Hassan & Arusha Cooray & Mark Holmes, 2017. "The effect of female and male health on economic growth: cross-country evidence within a production function framework," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 659-689, March.
    6. David E. Bloom, 2011. "Population Dynamics in India and Implications for Economic Growth," PGDA Working Papers 6511, Program on the Global Demography of Aging.
    7. Bernard Sarpong & Edward Nketiah-Amponsah & Nkechi S. Owoo, 2020. "Health and Economic Growth Nexus: Evidence from Selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) Countries," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 21(2), pages 328-347, April.
    8. Bloom, David E. & Canning, David & Hu, Linlin & Liu, Yuanli & Mahal, Ajay & Yip, Winnie, 2010. "The contribution of population health and demographic change to economic growth in China and India," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 17-33, March.
    9. Boachie, Micheal Kofi, 2015. "Effect of health on economic growth in Ghana:An application of ARDL bounds test to cointegration," MPRA Paper 67201, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Dinda, Soumyananda, 2016. "Interrelationships between Social and human Capital, and Economic Growth," MPRA Paper 89646, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2017.
    11. Bloom, David E. & Canning, David & Kotschy, Rainer & Prettner, Klaus & Schünemann, Johannes, 2024. "Health and economic growth: Reconciling the micro and macro evidence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    12. Narayan, Seema & Narayan, Paresh Kumar & Mishra, Sagarika, 2010. "Investigating the relationship between health and economic growth: Empirical evidence from a panel of 5 Asian countries," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 404-411, August.
    13. Neofytidou, Aliona & Fountas, Stilianos, 2020. "The impact of health on GDP: A panel data investigation," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 21(C).
    14. Jochen Hartwig, 2008. "Has Health Capital Formation Cured 'Baumol's Disease'? - Panel Granger Causality Evidence for OECD Countries," KOF Working papers 08-206, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    15. Martine AUDIBERT & Pascale COMBES MOTEL & Alassane DRABO, 2010. "Global Burden of Disease and Economic Growth," Working Papers 201036, CERDI.
    16. Matthew Cole & Eric Neumayer, 2006. "The impact of poor health on total factor productivity," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(6), pages 918-938.
    17. Ronald Kumar & Madhukar Singh, 2014. "Role of health expenditure and ICT in a small island economy: a study of Fiji," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 2295-2311, July.
    18. Bloom, David E. & Canning, David & Fink, Gunther & Finlay, Jocelyn E., 2007. "Does age structure forecast economic growth?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 569-585.
    19. Ngwen Ngangue & Kouty Manfred, 2015. "The Impact of Life Expectancy on Economic Growth in Developing Countries," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 5(4), pages 653-660, April.
    20. Hartwig, Jochen, 2010. "Is health capital formation good for long-term economic growth? - Panel Granger-causality evidence for OECD countries," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 314-325, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Poverty Line; Child Malnutrition; Maternal Mortality; Income Inequality; Infant Mortality; Developing Countries;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O50 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:ecoint:0008. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Angela Procopio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cacogit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.