2015/07/01 by David E. Bloom, Michael Kühn, Klaus Prettner · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Health Professions · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics #Global Health Care Issues #Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth #Geography #Genealogy #History
paper · pdf · doi:10.3386/w21411
openalex publication_date 2015/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
We analyze the economic consequences for less developed countries of investing in female health. In so doing we introduce a novel micro-founded dynamic general equilibrium framework in which parents trade off the number of children against investments in their education and in which we allow for health-related gender differences in productivity. We show that better female health speeds up the demographic transition and thereby the take-off toward sustained economic growth. By contrast, male health improvements delay the transition and the take-off because ceteris paribus they raise fertility. According to our results, investing in female health is therefore an important lever for development policies. However, and without having to assume anti-female bias, we also show that households prefer male health improvements over female health improvements because they imply a larger static utility gain. This highlights the existence of a dynamic trade-off between the short-run interests of households and long-run development goals. Our numerical analysis shows that even small changes in female health can have a strong impact on the transition process to a higher income level in the long run. Our results are robust with regard to a number of extensions, most notably endogenous investment in health care.