The Determinants of Health among Children

Numerous studies have investigated the factors that influence health among children. This body of literature is important because it illustrates the lasting impact of childhood health into adulthood. For example, Case et al. (2005) fi nd that childhood health has a long-term impact on adult health, education, and social status. Such information is valuable when crafting public policies aimed at improving overall health. Employing county-level...

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The Determinants of Health among Nonelderly Adults

Medical Care and Health To no one’s surprise, the literature has found the consumption of medical care has a positive impact on the production of adult health. However, the results also indicate that quantitatively, the impact is relatively small. For example, Hadley (1982) finds that a 10 percent increase in per capita medical care expenditures results in only a 1.5 percent decrease in the adult mortality rate. His result confirms those...

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What Is Medical Care?

Medical care is composed of myriad goods and services that maintain, improve, or restore a person’s health. For example, a young man might have shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff so that he can return to work, an elderly woman may have hip replacement surgery so she can walk without pain, or a parent may bring a child to the hygienist for an annual teeth cleaning to prevent future dental problems. Prescription drugs, wheelchairs, and...

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Why Good Health? Utility Analysis

As mentioned earlier, health, like any other durable goods, generates a flow of services. These services yield satisfaction, or what economists call utility. Your television set is another example of a durable good that generates a flow of services. It is the many hours of programming, or viewing services, your television provides that yield utility, not the set itself. As a good, health is desired for consumption and investment purposes....

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What Is Health?

The Mosby Medical Encyclopedia (1992, p. 360) defines health as “a state of physical, mental, and social well-being and the absence of disease or other abnormal condition.” Economists take a radically different approach. They view health as a durable good, or type of capital, that provides services. The flow of services produced from the stock of health “capital” is consumed continuously over an individual’s lifetime. Each person is assumed...

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Amount of Medical Care Spending

Amount of Medical Care Spending Only someone living in entire seclusion, perhaps a World War II Japanese soldier hiding somewhere on a Pacific island or someone raised in a nuclear fallout shelter of the 1950s, would be unaware of the situation involving medical care costs in the United States.6Indeed, it seems that not a day goes by without a radio, television, or popular press commentator pointing, with much alarm, to the high and continually...

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Taking the Pulse of the Health Economy

A health economy, like a macro economy, involves the production and consumption of goods and services and the distribution of those goods to consumers. A health economy differs from a macro economy because it distinctly considers production, consumption. Another difference concerns the way in which economists take the pulse of the macro economy and health economy. While economists are really concerned with efficiency and equity, the unemployment,...

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