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Health and Development

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An Economist’s Guide to Economic History

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

Abstract

Issues related to human and health capital formation are of particular importance because interventions on this front can have a direct impact on living standards, wellbeing, and economic development. Historical evidence can be especially valuable to understanding how human and health capital is formed, and how it contributes to development. Issues discussed in this chapter include water, sanitation and hygiene, maternal and child health, and climate and the environment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Broadly defined, this encompasses both education and health.

  2. 2.

    Although the focus here is on large-scale public health interventions, there is also a robust historical literature on child nutrition and stunting. See, for example, Steckel (1995) on stature and Feyrer et al. (2017) on micronutrient supplementation.

  3. 3.

    Conversely, social exclusion and discrimination in access to health care can lead to mistrust in the medical establishment, discouraging patients to seek treatment, and reinforcing existing health inequalities (Alsan and Wanamaker 2018).

  4. 4.

    Reductions in the disease burden may also raise household labour supply in rural settings where intra-household labour complementarities, common in agriculture, amplify the income losses resulting from individual illness shocks (Arthi and Fenske 2016).

  5. 5.

    See, for example, Ferrie et al. (2015), Aizer et al. (2016), Eriksson et al. (2017) and Arthi et al. (2018), who use linking to generate large-scale historical panel microdata for the study of spatial, socioeconomic, and racial disparities in health.

  6. 6.

    Other important historical microdata sources include the Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) project and the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS).

  7. 7.

    See, for example, Bhattacharya et al. (2013), who question the role of economic transition in Russia’s early 1990s spike in alcohol-related mortality.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Vellore Arthi

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  1. Vellore Arthi
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

    Matthias Blum

  2. Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

    Christopher L. Colvin

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Arthi, V. (2018). Health and Development. In: Blum, M., Colvin, C. (eds) An Economist’s Guide to Economic History. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96568-0_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96568-0_14

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