Health and Economic Expansion in Poor Lands

Abstract

Economic progress in poor lands remains a major goal as current efforts continue to yield limited advance for the nations where most of the world's people continue to live in poverty. The income gap between poor lands and the rich world continues to widen. Effective solutions require new approaches in three areas of science: the process of economic development, the dynamics of population growth, and the function of the health of man. Neither theory nor record suffices to provide economic progress with a basis for policy or programs in any of these areas. The motivation and attitudes of man are essential elements in the process of population and output change, an emphasis which contrasts with the more conventional concern about a nation's material and physical inputs in the process of economic and demographic advance. Health interventions play a decisive role in motivation and attitude changes. Health programs thus offer a major contribution to the process of economic and population development. Improved health in poor areas is a joint product of inputs from other professions as much as from the medical and public health sciences proper. In fact improved health in developing lands may itself derive for the most part from expanding output relative to population. The basic contribution of the health sciences in poor lands is the involvement of health interventions with attitude changes essential to economic progress, i.e. to the rates of growth of output and population. This article appraises the theory and the historical and current evidence in all three areas. Against this assessment it offers a research prospectus for further analysis of the interdependence of health, demographic, and economic progress in poor lands.