Health and economic development-evidence from the introduction of public health care

Strittmatter, Anthony und Sunde, Uwe (2013): Health and economic development-evidence from the introduction of public health care. In: Journal of Population Economics, Vol. 26, No. 4: pp. 1549-1584

Abstract

This paper investigates the causal effect of improvements in health on economic development using a long panel of European countries. Identification is based on the particular timing of the introduction of public health care systems in different countries, which is the random outcome of a political process. We document that the introduction of public health care systems had a significant immediate effect on health dynamics proxied by infant mortality and crude death rates. The findings suggest that health improvements had a positive effect on growth in income per capita and aggregate income.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Economics; Economics > Chairs > Chair for Population Economics
• Subjects: 300 Social sciences > 330 Economics
• Language: English