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230 Fighting the Diseases of Poverty
protects individuals not only against getting an illness per se, but
also against the long-term effects of that illness on their physical,
emotional, and cognitive development. For example, by stunting
physical growth, childhood diseases can curtail opportunities for
carrying out manual labor during adulthood. In developing countries,
where manual work is frequently the only option, physical
handicaps are particularly damaging. Cognitive development may
also be affected by vaccine-preventable disease. Measles, for
example, can cause brain damage or impair learning abilities, with
severe impacts on a child’s life prospects.
The importance of these effects is borne out by recent work
demonstrating the link from improved health to economic growth.
This research has made clear the importance of health interventions
for achieving growth and suggests that cost-effectiveness analyses,
as currently conducted, are likely to underestimate the benefits of
vaccination.
There are several channels through which health improves
wealth. The first is through its impact on education. Healthy
children are better able to attend school and to learn effectively
while in class. Studies have found that health interventions such as
de-worming programs and iron supplementation reduce absenteeism
from school (Miguel et al., 2004). Curing whipworm infection,
meanwhile, has been found to lead to improved test scores
(Nokes et al., 1992).
The second channel is through health’s impact on productivity.
Like schoolchildren, healthier workers have better attendance rates
and are more energetic and mentally robust. Workers in healthy
communities, moreover, need to take less time off to care for sick relatives.
Body size, which is greatly influenced by one’s health during
childhood, has been found to have large impacts on long-term productivity
(Fogel, 1991). Bloom et al. have calculated that a one-year
increase in life expectancy improves labor productivity by 4 per cent
(Bloom et al., 1998).
The third means by which health improves wealth is through its
effect on savings and investment. Healthier people expect to live