Determinants of Public Health Outcomes: A Macroeconomic Perspective

This paper investigates the nature of the aggregate production function of health services. We build a model to analyze the role of public policy in determining social health outcomes, taking into account households choices concerning education, health related expenditures and saving. In the model, education has a positive external effect on health outcomes. Next, we perform an empirical analysis using a data set covering 80 countries from 1961 to 1995. We find strong evidence for a dual role of education as a determinant of health outcomes. In particular, we find that society’s tertiary education attainment levels contribute positively to how many years an individual should expect to live, in addition to the role that basic education plays for life expectancy at the individual household level. This finding uncovers a key externality of the educational sector on the ability of society to take advantage of best practices in the health service sector.