1. The relationship between health and economic development is explored, focusing on nutrition-based health indicators. The spotlight is placed on the interrelated feedbacks between the influence of health on productivity, on one hand, and the influence of income on health status, on the other. Disentangling causality in these relationships has preoccupied much of the literature; the authors evaluate different empirical strategies that have been adopted and assess the results. There is now a body of evidence based on careful empirical studies that demonstrates a causal relationship between health and labor productivity; there is also evidence that, at least among the very poor, additional income is spent on improved nutrition. There are two issues that have received little attention although, the authors argue, they are likely to be very important. First, measurement of health is discussed in detail. Evidence is presented on how taking into account differences in the extent of measurement error is critical for interpreting the impact of health on wages. The same theme emerges in studies of the effect of income on health (specifically calorie intake). The key role of non-linearities in these relationships is highlighted and the authors demonstrate that a good deal of the variation in estimates of income elasticities of demand for calories can be ascribed to the role of measurement and functional form.
2. Over the past 20 years, investment in human resources has taken center stage in the study of developing economies. A voluminous set of wage function esti-mates provides the basis for calculating market returns to education for virtu-ally every country in the world. Studies have also looked at the effects of schooling on nonmarket outcomes. Prominent among those outcomes is the health of children and adults. Since health, like schooling, is a form of hu-man capital, one might expect it to also be related to labor market success. That link has received much less attention in the empirical literature, although in recent years there have been substantial advances in our understanding of the complex interrelationships between health, nutrition, and economic devel-opment. This paper reviews some of the evidence.
a. First, there is a long tradition of theoretical models of nutrition-based efficiency wages in the development literature.
b. Section 2, presents correlations be-tween health and labor outcomes. We sh-ow that, in the United States, men who are taller and heavier (given height) earn higher wages.
d. Although there are many commonali-ties between health and education, Sec-tion 4 highlights two aspects of health that distinguish it from most other hu-man capital measures.
e. Section 5 reviews the current state of the empirical evidence regarding the relationship between health and labor outcomes, taking into account both ex-perimental and nonexex-perimental studies.
3. Purpose :
a compelling case for linking aggregate movements in adult height to long-run changes in standards of living, including income, mortality, and possibly morbidity.
4.
a. Growth in height in the selection of age b. Growth in height in the selection of the sexes
c. Controlling for age (by including a dummy for each birth year), the correlation between height and wages is slightly larger. In fact, restricting the sample to men aged 30 to 35, the elasticity rises from 7.7 to 8.3 in Brazil.
d. An alternative model assumes wages are paid by the task, again costlessly observed, with piecerate wages being competitively determined
5.
case of health, there are two additional substantive issues that are likely to be of considerable import: direct contemporaneous feedback, or simultaneity, discussed in this subsection,and measurement of health, which is discussed in the next section.
Feedbacks between current health and income will arise, for example, if better health results in higher productivity, more hours at work, or a higher probability of working, and if, in turn, higher incomes are invested in health by spending more on health-augmenting inputs.
