Health over the Lifecycle: Essays On Health and Family

Abstract

In this compilation of essays, we explore how individual choices are shaped by forces that are largely external to them. Each essay in this collection re-examines old questions pertaining to different stages of the human economic lifecycle, specifically on decisions relating to health and health investments. In Chapter 1, we revisit Grossman’s (1972a; 1972b) health demand model, and estimate some of its primitive parameters, including health depreciation rates and the minimum health stock requirement. Based on comparable cross-country data constructed from a recently developed set of macro-economic accounts, our estimates confirm Grossman’s conjecture that health stock depreciates faster with age. This suggests that maintaining individual health stocks above the minimum requirement becomes increasingly more expensive late in life, making survival a costly burden. In Chapter 2, focusing on reproductive health, we evaluate a recurring claim at policy dialogs on whether sex education leads to riskier sexual behavior among young adults. Results in previous studies relying on randomized control trials may be biased when the simultaneity between sexual behavior and knowledge, the usual measures of sex education effectiveness, are not accounted for. We provide empirical evidence using Philippine micro-data, and from a re-analysis of previous studies that sex education promotes responsible sexual behavior. In the last section, Chapter 3, we attempt to bridge a gap in the literature by examining how fluctuations in commodity markets have long-term lifecycle implications through its immediate effect on an important child investment: breastmilk feeding. While the impacts of commodity markets on adult outcomes, e.g. poverty, food security and conflict, have been well studied, the effects on children, especially in developing country contexts, were largely overlooked.