Economic Worth of preventing death at different ages in developing countries

Extract

Public health programmes in less developed countries lack the resources to care for more than a very small fraction of their populations. Medical care is allocated almost by accident, with those living near a clinic usually obtaining the best care. Preferably, such care should be rationed among people according to a more explicit and justifiable criterion, and such a criterion could have an economic basis. Economically, it is more important to prevent the premature death of some persons than others, depending upon education, sex and age. Considering the age element only, preventing the death of a man of age 30 is ordinarily more worthwhile to his national economy than preventing the death of a young child of 5 years. In fact every living person, depending on age, typically has a present capitalized value to the economy. This is based on his expected marginal additions to national output and his expected average subtractions as a consumer from it. These expected production and consumption streams should be discounted at a rate comparable to the marginal productivity of capital in the economy. Sample calculations of such present values indicate that infants typically have negative values at time of birth. Hence a marginal reduction in births through limited birth control expenditures is economically desirable.