TY - JOUR AU - Madsen,Jakob TI - Health, Human Capital Formation and Knowledge Production: Two Centuries of International Evidence JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 18461 PY - 2012 Y2 - October 2012 DO - 10.3386/w18461 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18461 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18461.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Jakob B. Madsen Department of Economics Monash University POB 197 Caulfield East Vic 3145 Australia E-Mail: jakob.madsen@monash.edu AB - Recent medical research shows that health is highly influential for learning and the ability to think laterally; however, past economic studies have failed to empirically examine the influence of health on learning, schooling, and ideas production; the main drivers of growth in endogenous growth models. This paper constructs a measure of health-adjusted educational attainment among the working age population based on their health status during the time they did their education. Using annual data for 21 OECD countries over the past two centuries it is shown that health has been highly influential for the quantity and quality of schooling, innovations and growth. ER -