Health capital: Cross country investigation of economic development in South Asian Countries (Study of Developing countries Bangladesh, India and Pakistan)

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to investigate health capital in economic development using life expectancy as a health proxy. As we can divide role of health in economic development into two categories, one is the direct channel which defines health in the empirical terms of labor productivity regarding production output. On the other hand the indirect channel would be the health awareness that generates the incentive for longevity of the population in terms of investments on health. So, we would analyse the labor productivity in response to investments in health and also to investigate the impact of investments in the health awareness on the longevity of these nations. We are considering these countries of South Asia because of two reasons; one is there literacy rate that is very low compare to other Asian countries (Russia, Japan, and Singapore). And, other factor is the availability of cheap labor in these countries which drives the attention towards their health conditions. The analysis would be a comparative study of these countries based on a cross-sectional data taken on necessary variables. In the first chapter we would introduce the concepts of health capital, how is it important for a country to maintain a healthy society in return for better economic output. The economic welfare of a country depends on the health capital of a nation, how is it important for economic development? The second chapter would explore literature review and we will take reference of other developing countries whose health capital has been revised in the economic development aspects. We can further extend the literature to different campaigns and initiatives carried out to eliminate the loss of capital in a nation. Moreover as this is the central chapter we would take the data on the relevant variables i-e; life expectancy, literacy rate, production or output of labor for these countries. We will run regression analysis to evaluate the estimated variables. The results will be compared to the evidences of other economies and we will also do cross-country evaluation of the base economies (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh). We will follow statistical and econometrics techniques to derive our regression results. The final chapter would be the remarks, conclusions and policy implications for any possible improvements or elimination of certain aspects that can affect the developmental strategies. However the policy implications and conclusive remarks will be according to the output of regression analysis.