The performance of the Latin American economies in the 20th century has been disappointing. Using per capita GDP as a measure, Latin America has roughly maintained its income (relative to the world) over the last 100 years. If, instead the post-1950 performance is considered, the results are more discouraging. Using data from Maddison (2003), it follows that the Latin American economies had a l...

This paper tests using survey data from China whether individual health is associated with income and community-level income inequality. Although poor health and high inequality are key features of many developing countries, most of the earlier literature has drawn on data from developed countries in studying the association between the two. We find that self-reported health status increases wi...

The relationship between per capita income and a number of pollution indicators has been found to display an inverted U-shaped or downward-sloping pattern. Corruption may affect this relationship in two distinct ways: by raising pollution at given income levels (direct effect) and by reducing per capita income (indirect effect). The total effect is ambiguous a priori. Using cross section data f...

Essay 1: To replicate an industrial revolution: from exogenous to endogenous growth In the last quarter of the second millennium many countries experienced, simultaneously, an industrial revolution (an exponential increase in the income per capita) and a demographic transition (an increase first and a decrease later of the population growth rate). How do we account for these facts? Following Lu...

OBJECTIVE Access to healthcare is mostly contingent on out-of-pocket spending (OOPS) by health seekers, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This would require many LMICs to raise enough funds to achieve universal health insurance coverage. But, are individuals or households willing to pay for health insurance, and how much? What factors positively affect WTP for health ins...

Aubhik Khan* It is difficult to overemphasize the potential benefits of economic growth for improving human welfare. For example, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, three of the world’s lowest income nations, had real per capita GDP of $1908, $1633, and $1793, respectively, in 1992. In contrast, the equivalent values for three of the world’s highest income nations, Denmark, Sweden, and the United...

The assumptions of declining fertility with rising income and rising per-capita output with rising population imply the existence of a stable demographic equilibrium with a high standard of living and relatively low total population. This Smithian equilibrium differs from the well-known Malthusian equilibrium in its comparative statics: technical progress lowers the Smithian equilibrium populat...

INTRODUCTION The objective of this paper is to investigate the relation between state and local government expenditures on public services and all cause mortality in 48 US states in 1987, and determine if the relation between income inequality and mortality is conditioned on levels of public services available in these jurisdictions. METHODS Per capita public expenditures and a needs adjusted...