What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Poorer : Adult Wages and the Early-Life Disease Environment in India
A growing literature documents links between early-life health and human capital, and between human capital and adult wages. Although most of this literature has focused on developed countries, economists have hypothesized that effects of early-lif...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank Group, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/11/20421888/doesnt-kill-makes-poorer-adult-wages-early-life-disease-environment-india http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20644 |
| Summary: | A growing literature documents links
between early-life health and human capital, and between
human capital and adult wages. Although most of this
literature has focused on developed countries, economists
have hypothesized that effects of early-life health on adult
economic outcomes could be even greater in developing
countries. This paper asks whether the early-life disease
environment in India influences adult economic wages. The
paper uses two measures of early-life disease environment to
investigate this question: infant mortality rates and open
defecation. A district-level differences-in-differences
strategy is used to show that men born in district-years
with lower infant mortality and better sanitation earned
plausibly higher wages in their 20s and 30s. The effect
estimates are applied to calculate the fiscal and welfare
consequences of the disease environment, which are
considerable. In particular, eliminating open defecation
would increase tax revenue by enough to offset completely a
cost to the government of over \$400 per household that
stops defecating in the open. A fiscally neutral elimination
of open defecation in India would increase the net present
value of lifetime wages by more than \$1,800 for an average
male worker born today. These large economic benefits ignore
any other benefits of improved health or reduced mortality.
The result suggests that the disease environment could have
important effects on developing-country economic outcomes. |
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