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232 Fighting the Diseases of Poverty
finance the introduction of anticipated vaccines covering pneumococcal
disease, rotavirus, and meningococcal A/C conjugate. This
program will operate in 75 low-income countries with a combined
population of 3.8 billion from 2005–2020, and will cost $13 billion.
We examine the likely effect of the program on worker productivity
at the individual level. The second study covers efforts in the Philippines
to immunize children with DTP, TB, polio, and measles
vaccines. It measures vaccines’ effects on children’s cognitive development,
an important determinant of adult earnings.
The countries involved in the GAVI immunization program suffer
from high rates of child mortality. In countries that are not covered
by the program, there are fewer than 10 child deaths per thousand
live births. In the GAVI countries, there are over 65 deaths per
thousand. GAVI estimates that its program will reduce child mortality
by 4 deaths per thousand live births in 2005, rising to 12 per
thousand by 2020 as the campaign expands.
We used a life table to translate averted deaths into increased
probability of adult survival (the proportion of 15 year olds who
reach age 60), and found that the GAVI program will increase the
adult survival rate by 5 per 1,000 initially and by 16 per 1,000 by
2020 (life expectancy will increase by half a year initially and by one
and a half years by the end of the program).
To translate the latter into growth of wages and income per
capita, we used estimates in the economics literature from Shastry
and Weil (2003) and Weil (2005) (Shastry & Weil 2002) that show the
link between health and wages in individuals. 5 This analysis shows
that for a group of 1000 adults, for each additional person surviving
from age 15 to 60, average wages rise by 0.179 per cent. Based on
the assumption that labor productivity and wages account for twothirds
of national income (Hall & Jones, 1999), we calculate that each
extra surviving adult in a group of 1000 boosts income per capita by
0.119 per cent.
From this figure, we calculate that the average percentage
increase in income for the children whose immunization coverage
increases through the GAVI program will rise from 0.78 per cent in