Health, wealth, fertility, education and inequality

This paper uses a new cross-country dataset to estimate the strength of the links between different dimensions of social and economic development, including indicators of health, fertility and education as well as material wellbeing. The paper differs from previous studies in employing data for different income groups in each country in order to provide direct evidence on factors driving inequality, and in using a unique measure of material wellbeing that does not rely on PPP comparisons.UnpublishedAcemoglu, D., S. Johnson and J. Robinson (2001) “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation”, American Economic Review 91: 1369-1401. Ahlburg, D. (1996) “Population Growth and Poverty” in Ahlburg, D., A. Kelley and K. Oppenheim Mason (eds.) The Impact of Population Growth on Well-Being in Developing Countries, Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Becker, G. (1981) A Treatise on the Family, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Bloom, D., D. Canning and J. Sevilla (2004) “The Effect of Health on Economic Growth: A Production Function Approach,” World Development, 32: 1-13. CIA (1997) World Factbook, Washington, DC. Dixon, J. and K. Hamilton (1996) “Expanding the Measure of Wealth”, Finance and Development (1996). Easterly, W. and R. Levine (1997) “Africa’s Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 112: 1203-1250. Fernandez, R. and R. Rogerson (1997) “The Determinants of Public Education Expenditures: Evidence from the States, 1950-1990” NBER Working Paper 5995. Hoare, R. (2005) World Climate, http://www.worldclimate.com. Kaufmann, D, A. Kraay and M. Mastruzzi (2003) “Governance Matters III: Governance Indicators for 1996-2002”, World Bank Policy Research Department Working Paper. Krain, M. (1997) “State-Sposored Mass Murder: The Onset and Severity of Genocides and Politicides”, Journal of Conflict Resolution 41: 331-360. La Porta, R., F. Lopez-de-Silanes, A. Shleifer and R. Vishny (1998) “Law and Finance”, Journal of Political Economy 106: 1113-55. McArthur, J. and J. Sachs (2001) “Institutions and Geography: Comment on Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2000).” NBER Working Paper 8114. Pritchett, L. and L. Summers (1993) “Wealthier is Healthier” World Bank Country Economics Department Working Paper 1150. Strulik, H. and S. Siddiqui (2002) “Tracing the Income−Fertility Nexus: Nonparametric Estimates for a Panel of Countries”, Economics Bulletin, 15: 1−9. Summers, R. and A. Heston (1991) “The Penn World Tables (Mark 5): An Expanded Set of International Comparisons: 1950-1988”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 106: 327-368. Teulings, C. and T. van Rens (2003) “Education, Growth and Income Inequality”, CEPR Discussion Paper 3863