Health Investment, Human Capital, and Economic Outcomes
Over a decade has passed since the World Health Organization’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health asserted that improving health, in addition to a fundamental end of economic development, also constitutes an essential mechanism to reduce poverty. Concurrently, ambitious targets were set to improve health and reduce poverty for the poorest through the Millennium Development Goals. Since then, new resources have been engaged to improve developing-nation health through funding mechanisms like the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, Gates Foundation, and Pepfar such that development assistance for health has more than doubled in the last decade. This expansion has produced significant progress in reducing mortality and morbidity, particularly from HIV and malaria, in some of the lowest income nations of the world, while middle-income and some low-income nations have significantly increased funding for health insurance systems as well. However, given the global financial crisis and the consequent austerity in public spending, this increase in resources to improve health is unlikely to be sustained. Even though substantial progress has been made, enormous disease burdens still threaten growth, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as south Asia and parts of Latin America. This session, therefore, will investigate the progress that has been made in improving health in developing nations, review what has been learned about the mechanisms through which health may improve well-being, and explore the challenges still ahead for fostering development through health investment in an environment of constrained development assistance.