Efecto de la salud a la renta per cápita del África Subsahariana durante el periodo 1966-2011.

Abstract

(eng)Economic researchers have often examined the relationship between income per capita and health capital, finding evidence of a strong relationship. Besides, a large body of both theoretical and empirical literature has affirmed a positive impact of improvements in human capital on income growth. This work examines how an improvement in health affects income growth. We suppose that an increment in life expectancy improves human capital, and therefore, income per capita increases. And that is the hypothesis we want to test in Sub-Saharan countries from 1966 to 2011. First of all, we analyse the relationship between income per capita and health, we use data of both OCDE countries as well as Sub-Saharan countries. Nevertheless, we focus on Sub-Saharan countries in order to see if income per capita has a strong link with health, or if instead there are others variables stronger linked with health than income. We use the life expectancy of 2009, but we use the average of all explanatory variables for the period of 1995 and 2009. We conclude that there are others variables that explain life expectancy better than income, these variables are; AIDS prevalence rate (or others infectious diseases), rate of access to hospital services and quality in sanitation systems. Secondly, we have tried to prove that health capital increases income per capita. In order to achieve this, we have done a theoretical and empirical analysis. In the theoretical analysis we suggest that an improvement in health affects income per capita by three ways. The first one is the demographic transition, the second one is the improvements in physical and mental workers capacities and the third one is the change in economic outlooks. Last but not least, in the empirical analysis we do an estimation of the health’s sensibility on income per capita, we use two methods, a data panel and a least squares in two stages. We conclude that there are 32 countries which meet all hypotheses’ conditions for the period 1995-2011. We also conclude that there are 20 countries which meet all hypotheses’ conditions for the period 1966-2011.