Modelling the role of health status in the transition out of malthusian equilibrium

Resumen

This paper develops a two periods, overlapping generations model of economic growth in order to analyse the mechanisms through which health status has contributed to the Transition out of Malthusian Times. Health affects the accumulation of human capital both directly and indirectly, through its effects on the learning capacity of children and on the survival probability from childhood to adulthood. An extremely poor level of child health might determine that the threshold level of adult income that allows for child education was too high to be reached. In this situation, a minimum health status, for any given adult income, is necessary for the investment in education to be worthwhile. Hence, the achievement of a minimum level of physical status emerges as a necessary condition for the development of intellectual human capital and it determines a permanent change in the slope of the growth path.