Per capita GDP has limited use as a well-being indicator because it does not capture many dimensions that imply a "good life," such as health and equality of opportunity. However, per capita GDP has the virtues of easy interpretation and can be calculated with manageable data requirements....

We develop a life-cycle model of optimal retirement and savings behavior under complete markets where retirement is caused by worsening health in old age. Our model explains the long-run decline in the age of retirement as an income level effect. We show that improvements in health and longevity...

The consequences of health and health policy for economic development are potentially of major importance to policymakers in both the health and development fields. Yet no thorough assessment of the relevant conclusions of the research literature is available, and the research base itself is...

Economists use micro-based and macro-based approaches to assess the macroeconomic return to population health. The macro-based approach tends to yield estimates that are either negative and close to zero or positive and an order of magnitude larger than the range of estimates derived from the...

This paper examines health disparities in biomarkers among a representative sample of Indians aged 45 and older, using data from the pilot round of the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI). We document an educational gradient in hemoglobin (Hb) level, a marker used for diagnosing anemia....

This paper investigates the economic returns to parental health. To account for potential endogeneity between parental health and child outcomes, we leverage longitudinal microdata from Indonesia to estimate individual fixed effects models. Our results show that the economic returns to parental...