Disease and Development Revisited

David Bloom, David Canning and Günther Fink

PGDA Working Papers from Program on the Global Demography of Aging

Abstract: 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 growth. Using their data we reject this assumption in favor of a model of conditional convergence, with income adjusting to its steady state over time. We show that, allowing for conditional convergence, exogenous improvements in health due to technical advances associated with the epidemiological transition appear to have increased income levels.

Keywords: Disease; development; economic growth; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Disease and Development Revisited (2014)
Working Paper: Disease and Development Revisited (2013)
Working Paper: Disease and Development Revisited (2009)
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