Children’s health, human capital accumulation, and R&D-based economic growth

Abstract

We analyze the effects of childrens health on human capital accumulation and on long-run economic growth. For this purpose we design an R&D-based growth model in which the stock of human capital of the next generation is determined by parental education and health investments. We show that i) there is a complementarity between education and health: if parents want to have better educated children, they also raise health investments and vice versa; ii) parental health investments exert an unambiguously positive effect on long-run economic growth, iii) faster population growth reduces long-run economic growth. These results are consistent with the empirical evidence for modern economies in the twentieth century.