Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T11:12:37.115Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

EFFECT OF PUBLIC HEALTH INVESTMENT ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT VIA SAVINGS AND FERTILITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2016

Hideki Nakamura*
Affiliation:
Osaka City University
Yuko Mihara
Affiliation:
Okayama University of Science
*
Address correspondence to: Hideki Nakamura, Faculty of Economics, Osaka City University 3-3-138 Sugimoto, Sumiyoshi, Osaka 558-8585, Japan; e-mail: [email protected].

Abstract

This study considers adult mortality and analyzes the effect of public health investment on economic development, whereby investment increases savings but decreases fertility through a decrease in adult mortality. As the labor force increases, investment temporarily decreases capital per unit of labor. However, the decrease in fertility increases capital per unit of labor in subsequent periods. By considering these two opposing effects of decreasing fertility, we clarify the conditions required for investment to improve economic development via increasing savings and decreasing fertility. We examine panel estimation and present some weak evidence for our model.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Acemoglu, Daron and Johnson, Simon (2007) Disease and development: The effect of life expectancy on economic growth. Journal of Political Economy 115, 925985.Google Scholar
Angeles, Luis (2010) Demographic transitions: Analyzing the effects of mortality on fertility. Journal of Population Economics 23, 99120.Google Scholar
Barro, Robert J. and Lee, Johng-Wha (2010) A New Data Set for Educational Attainment in the World, 1950–2010. NBER working paper 15902.Google Scholar
Cervellati, Matteo and Sunde, Uwe (2011) Life expectancy and economic growth: The role of the demographic transition. Journal of Economic Growth 16, 99133.Google Scholar
Chakraborty, Shankha (2004) Endogenous lifetime and economic growth. Journal of Economic Theory 116, 119137.Google Scholar
Chen, Hung-Ju (2010) Life expectancy, fertility, and educational investment. Journal of Population Economics 23, 3756.Google Scholar
Galor, Oded (2005) From stagnation to growth: Unified growth theory. In Aghion, P. and Durlauf, S. (eds.), Handbook of Economic Growth, Vol. 1A, pp. 171293. North-Holland: Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Galor, Oded and Weil, David N. (2000) Population, technology, and growth: From Malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond. American Economic Review 90, 806828.Google Scholar
Hazan, Moshe and Berdugo, Binyamin (2002) Child labour, fertility, and economic growth. Economic Journal 112, 810828.Google Scholar
Lorentzen, Peter, McMillan, John, and Wacziarg, Romain (2008) Death and development. Journal of Economic Growth 13, 81124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moav, Omer (2005) Cheap children and the persistence of poverty. Economic Journal 115, 88110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Momota, Akira (2009) A population-macroeconomic growth model for currently developing countries. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 33, 431453.Google Scholar
Nakamura, Hideki and Seoka, Yoshihiko (2014) Differential fertility and economic development. Macroeconomic Dynamics 18, 10481068.Google Scholar
Weil, David N. (2007) Accounting for the effect of health on economic growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics 122, 12651306.Google Scholar