TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lorentzen,Peter
AU  - McMillan,John
AU  - Wacziarg,Romain
TI  - Death and Development
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11620
PY  - 2005
Y2  - September 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11620
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11620.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Peter Lorentzen
Department of Political Science
210 Barrows Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94131
USA
Tel: 510-642-4684
Fax: 510-642-9515
E-Mail: lorentzen@berkeley.edu

John McMillan
E-Mail: N/A user is deceased

Romain Wacziarg
Anderson School of Management at UCLA
C-510 Entrepreneurs Hall
110 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481
Tel: 310 825 4507
E-Mail: wacziarg@ucla.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2005-09-19
AB  - Analyzing a variety of cross-national and sub-national data, we argue that high adult mortality reduces economic growth by shortening time horizons. Higher adult mortality is associated with increased levels of risky behavior, higher fertility, and lower investment in physical and human capital. Furthermore, the feedback effect from economic prosperity to better health care implies that mortality could be the source of a poverty trap. In our regressions, adult mortality explains almost all of Africa's growth tragedy. Our analysis also underscores grim forecasts of the long-run economic costs of the ongoing AIDS epidemic.
ER  -