Population, Health and Growth

Among the seventeen sustainable sustainable development goals recently approved by the United Nation's includes the goal of 'ensuring healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages' with a specific target on ending the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria among others by 2030. Health burden as one of the many challenges (among others) faced by the small Pacific Island countries where communicable diseases (tuberculosis and malaria) as well as non-communicable diseases (cancer, disease of the heart, stroke and obesity) are on the rise. The presence of non-communicable diseases is the strongest visible evidence in the Pacific Island countries. This is likely to have a strong deterimental effect on the long-term development of several of these countries. In light of this and the United Nations sustainable development goal of ensuring healthy lives, this article examines the effect of population health on economic growth in a sample of small Pacific Island countries. The analytical framework adopts the neoclassical growth model where it attempts to empirically assess the impact of tuberculosis, obesity and cholesterol levels on population aged twenty-five and above by utilising cross-country data pooled across the years 1992 to 2009. The estimation phase controls for several potential effects on growth. The empirical findings obtained through regression analysis reveal a negative and statistically significant correlation of obesity and cholesterol levels on economic growth of Pacific Island countries. We find negative but statistically insignificant effect of tuberculosis on growth. Gross fixed capital formation and human capital are found to be other significant contributors to growth. Our major conclusion is that population health does matter for long-term sustained economic growth. In terms of policy implications, Government interventions through providing more funding to curtail the spread of lifestyle diseases as shown in this study can lead to better health outcomes and aid the process of economic growth.