We exploit the major international health improvements from the 1940s to estimate the effect of life expectancy on economic performance. We construct predicted mortality using preintervention mortality rates from various diseases and dates of global interventions. Predicted mortality has a large impact on changes in life expectancy starting in 1940 but no effect before 1940. Using predicted mortality as an instrument, we find that a 1 percent increase in life expectancy leads to a 1.7‐2 percent increase in population. Life expectancy has a much smaller effect on total GDP, however. Consequently, there is no evidence that the large increase in life expectancy raised income per capita.

/pdf/disease-and-development-the-effect-of-life-expectancy-on-550gxx5wjt.pdf

Disease and Development: The Effect of Life Expectancy on Economic Growth

One of the most sizable and least predictable shocks to economic opportunities in developing countries is major illness. We investigate the extent to which families are able to insure consumption against major illness using a unique panel data set from Indonesia that combines excellent measures of health status with consumption information. We find that there are significant economic costs associated with major illness, and that there is very imperfect insurance of consumption over illness episodes. These estimates suggest that public disability insurance or subsidies for medical care may improve welfare by providing consumption insurance.

/pdf/insuring-consumption-against-illness-dyygkf0z5j.pdf

Insuring Consumption Against Illness

Much of the literature on consumption smoothing and on risk sharing has focused on the ability of the household as a unit to protect its consumption. Little is known about the ability of individual...

/pdf/in-sickness-and-in-health-risk-sharing-within-households-in-4766y7uq38.pdf

In Sickness and in Health: Risk Sharing within Households in Rural Ethiopia

One of the most sizable and least predictable shocks to economic opportunities in developing countries is major illness, both in terms of medical care expenditures and lost income from reduced labor supply and productivity. As a result, families may not be able to smooth their consumption over periods of illness. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which families are able to insure consumption against major illness using a unique panel data set from Indonesia that combines excellent measures of health status with consumption information. We focus on the effect of large exogenous changes in physical functioning. We find that there are significant economic costs associated with these illnesses, albeit more from income loss than from medical expenditures. We also find a robust and striking rejection of full consumption insurance. Indeed, the deviation from full consumption smoothing is significant, particularly for illnesses that severely limit physical function; families are able to smooth less than 30 percent of the income loss from these illnesses. These estimates suggest large welfare gains from the introduction of formal disability insurance, and that the large public subsidies for medical care typical of most developing countries may improve welfare by providing consumption insurance.

Disability and Poverty in Developing Countries: A Multidimensional Study

Sickness should make individuals less productive, but there are problems in measuring this effect. First, how is adult morbidity measured in a household survey? Second, how is the impact of morbidity on productivity inferred, if earning is partly used to improve health? Self-reported functional activity limitation due to illness is considered as an indicator of morbidity for wage earners and self employed. To deal with both the measurement and joint determination problems, an instrumental variable estimation approach is used where local food prices and health services instrument for disability days that reduce wages by at least 10 percent and hours by 3 of more percent.

Wage and Labor Supply effects of Illness in Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana: Instrumental Variable Estimates for Days Disabled

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

T-P Schultz

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Wage and Labor Supply effects of Illness in Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana: Instrumental Variable Estimates for Days Disabled