For example, Petty, who is trained in medicine, realized the economic benefits of a healthy population. He even called for clinics to care for orphans and poor children.
I was struck by a recent Wall Street Journal article that reminded me of Petty's intelligence. David Wessel reported on a paper from the Chicago branch of the Federal Reserve Board, showing how children's health care boosted test scores. The study itself pointed to a relatively obvious outcome, I wondered why so little attention has been paid to the economic payoffs from better health care -- especially in the mainstream media.
Here is a snippet from the articlet:
Wessel, David. 2009. "Wider Health-Care Access Pays Off." Wall Street Journal (8 October): p. A2. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125493500031971173.html#mod=todays_us_page_one
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Working Paper 2008-20
"Kenneth Chay of Brown University, Jonathan Guryan of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and Bhashkar Mazumder of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago ... (link) improvements in test scores of black teenagers from the South in the 1980s to improved health care they received as children after Southern hospitals were integrated in the 1960s. The bottom line, in a working paper circulated by the Chicago Fed, is this: "Improved post-neonatal health among blacks born between the early 1960s and early 1970s ... led to long-term improvements in the academic and cognitive skills of these cohorts as teenagers."
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-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901 http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com