Health and nutrition are important as ends in themselves and often are emphasized as critical components of basic needs in developing countries. Cross-country comparisons of standard data suggest that on the average health and nutrition in the developing world falls considerably short of that in the developed world. The chapter presents a review on a number of issues regarding health and nutrition in developing countries and available studies on the determinants of health and nutrition and on their impact on productivity in developing countries. First, the chapter presents a theoretical framework and some issues pertaining to the empirical representation of health and nutrition. The chapter then presents a survey on existing studies of both health and nutrition determinants and on their productivity influence and conclude with some discussion of policy issues and directions for future research. A theoretical framework for the determinants of health and nutrition and their possible productivity impacts is essential to analyze these variables in an organized manner and to be able to interpret empirical studies. The chapter discusses micro production function and demand considerations. The chapter then discusses in brief the supply side and macro relations. Finally, several major econometric problems are reviewed, stating that they are ubiquitous in empirical studies attempting to relate health, nutrition, and socioeconomic variables. Two broad categories of studies of health determinants are of particular interest: those attempting to estimate the reduced-form demand for health outcomes and health-care goods, and those attempting to estimate the underlying health production function.
