Abstract

Accounting for the Effect of Health on Economic Growth
David N. Weil
June 2005

I use microeconomic estimates of the effect of health on individual outcomes to construct
macroeconomic estimates of the proximate effect of health on GDP per capita. I use a variety of
methods to construct estimates of the return to health, which I combine with cross-country and
historical data on several health indicators including height, adult survival, and age at menarche.
My preferred estimate of the share of cross-country variance in log income per worker explained
by variation in health is 22.6%, roughly the same as the share accounted for by human capital
from education, and larger than the share accounted for by physical capital. I present alternative
estimates ranging between 9.5% and 29.5%. My preferred estimate of the reduction in world
income variance that would result from eliminating health variations among countries is 36.6%.

David_Weil@Brown.edu. I am grateful to Josh Angrist, Andrew Foster, Rachel Friedberg, David
Genesove, Byungdoo Sohn, and seminar participants at Brown University, University of
California at San Diego, Clemson University, Ben Gurion University, University of Haifa, the
Harvard Center for International Development, Hebrew University, Indiana University, the
International Monetary Fund, New York University, North Carolina State University, Ohio State
University, and the University of Wisconsin for helpful discussions. Suchit Arora graciously
provided his data on height and adult survival. Doug Park and Dimitra Politi provided superlative
research assistance.

Back to David N. Weil's Working Papers Page

This page last updated on: September 1, 2005