Progress in Health: What Index of What Progress?

Abstract

Preliminary statistical analysis of changes in health and in health programs in poor areas, where labor is the dominant factor of production, suggests a positive effect of health inputs on subsequent output. There is an economic rationale for such a relationship in poor lands, through changes in the vigor and motivation of the self-employed workers who are predominant in the labor force. Such a positive role also fits new doctrines of growth, in which quality of factor inputs receives greater weight than quantity of labor or capital. There exists a need for such additional statistical analyses, and especially in small areas (villages, counties, districts), where outputs and production processes are more homogeneous than in nations as a whole. The results of such work could be fundamental to understanding the dynamic of health-population-progress in poor lands. Existing documentation shows positive association between growth in population and growth in output per person in the early progress years of today's rich lands. Parallel developments seem to pertain in the recent growth history of many of today's developing lands. The possibility that some measure of health inputs could serve as a tool and an index of economic and social progress would call for changes in important current programs postulated on the negative influence of health inputs on the economic growth of today's poor lands. It would also encourage a re-allocation of the world's health resources in order to handle critical development tasks in areas with "great unmet health needs."