Health and Growth : Commission on Growth and Development

The commission on growth and development
was established in April 2006. It felt that the benefits of
growth were not fully appreciated, but also recognized that
the causes of growth were not fully understood. Growth is
often overlooked and underrated as an instrument for
tackling the world's most pressing problems, such as
poverty, illiteracy, income inequality, unemployment, and
pollution. At the same time, grasp of the sources of growth
in developing countries is less definitive than commonly
thought even though advice is sometimes given to policy
makers in these countries with great confidence, perhaps
greater than the state of knowledge will justify.
Consequently, the commission's mandate is to 'take
stock of the state of theoretical and empirical knowledge on
economic growth with a view to drawing implications for
policy for the current and next generation of policy makers.
Good health improves the capacity to learn and work, which
dramatically improves income and welfare at the household
level even if the effects at the aggregate level may be
harder to discern. The methodological problems in capturing
these gains deserve attention and further work. More
attention also needs to be paid to upgrading healthcare
institutions, as more of the same is neither affordable nor desirable.