The reason these things are unlikely to be the best way to increase growth is that they play no role in the causal story of the huge differences in GDP per capita across space and time.
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But given the story above, it would be very surprising if this was the case: differences in rates of deworming explain a miniscule fraction of the variation in individual economic outcomes across the world. No-one argues that deworming is among the top 1000 causes of the huge economic transformation documented above.
These seem like clearly insufficient arguments. They strike me as analogous to:
Don’t focus on fixing your broken leg. What separates the top 20 bicyclists from the next 40 is the kind of bike they ride. Focus on getting the right bike.
Different circumstances apply in different places and focusing on and importing salient characteristics of the winners is not likely to be successful because it’s almost never the case in complex domains like this that a single factor is sufficient for success on its own.
More concretely, while no one argues that deworming is a top cause of the huge economic transformation, plenty of people argue that disease environment/burden (or geography more broadly) is an important cause of differential economic success. For example, Historical Development references arguments that the tsetse fly had substantial impacts on Africa’s path of development (“by inhibiting the development of intensive agriculture using draft animals, resulted in lower populations, less urbanization, and less state development”).
I think this view would probably be endorsed by many prominent development economists. But I concede that there are also development economists who believe that health and education is very important.
When I first read about Rodrik’s theory of development, I updated in the direction that health and education are not that important for growth at least for very poor countries, even though it’s quite unintuitive.
Historically, almost all non-poor countries have grown their economies in three steps:
Rural to urban migration: Unskilled (subsistence) farmers migrate to cities and start working in factories. Over night, this increases their productivity many times over.
Manufacturing absorbs vast amounts of unskilled labor: These workers need very little human capital: they do not need to be educated because work in factories is very simple. Population health does not prevent growth either, because there are enough to replace sick workers.
Manufacturing exports niche products to the world market: The factories find their niche product (e.g. initially often garments) and export to the world market, which can absorb large amounts of the same good (e.g. billions of shoes)
Again quoting Weil’s review of “Health and growth” (emphasis mine):
As is often the case in economics, the observation that income and health are correlated, is only the beginning of the discussion. Such a correlation can be induced by causation running in either direction, as well as by the effects of some third factor. A priori, there are good reasons to think that all of these are possibilities. People who are healthier can work harder and learn more in school; and where people live longer they will be incentivized to invest more in education.Thus, we would expect better health to cause economic growth. On the other hand, higher income allows individuals or governments to make investments that yield better health. Finally, differences in the quality of institutions (looking across countries), in human capital (looking across individuals), or in the level of technology (looking over time) can induce correlated movements in health and income.”
re: Nunn: I’m not ruling out that invariant geographical factors influence economic development by way of health. But it’s a different question on whether we can do anything about that by ramping up health spending and ameliorate these differences and whether that’s important for growth.
Rural to urban migration: Unskilled (subsistence) farmers migrate to cities and start working in factories. Over night, this increases their productivity many times over.
Perhaps tangential, but unless the urban workers are fed by imports, in order to allow rural to urban migration, the country needs agricultural improvements so that people can feed a lot more than themselves. So I think the green revolution technologies of fertilizer, pesticides, and improved crop varieties (mentioned by the OP) are quite important beyond the direct food supply improvement, and the penetration of these is much lower in Africa.
I updated in the direction that health and education are not that important for growth at least for very poor countries
Yeah, I will have to look into this perspective more.
But it’s a different question on whether we can do anything about that by ramping up health spending and ameliorate these differences and whether that’s important for growth.
These seem like clearly insufficient arguments. They strike me as analogous to:
Different circumstances apply in different places and focusing on and importing salient characteristics of the winners is not likely to be successful because it’s almost never the case in complex domains like this that a single factor is sufficient for success on its own.
More concretely, while no one argues that deworming is a top cause of the huge economic transformation, plenty of people argue that disease environment/burden (or geography more broadly) is an important cause of differential economic success. For example, Historical Development references arguments that the tsetse fly had substantial impacts on Africa’s path of development (“by inhibiting the development of intensive agriculture using draft animals, resulted in lower populations, less urbanization, and less state development”).
I think this view would probably be endorsed by many prominent development economists. But I concede that there are also development economists who believe that health and education is very important.
When I first read about Rodrik’s theory of development, I updated in the direction that health and education are not that important for growth at least for very poor countries, even though it’s quite unintuitive.
From the appendix doc:
Again quoting Weil’s review of “Health and growth” (emphasis mine):
re: Nunn: I’m not ruling out that invariant geographical factors influence economic development by way of health. But it’s a different question on whether we can do anything about that by ramping up health spending and ameliorate these differences and whether that’s important for growth.
Perhaps tangential, but unless the urban workers are fed by imports, in order to allow rural to urban migration, the country needs agricultural improvements so that people can feed a lot more than themselves. So I think the green revolution technologies of fertilizer, pesticides, and improved crop varieties (mentioned by the OP) are quite important beyond the direct food supply improvement, and the penetration of these is much lower in Africa.
Yeah, I will have to look into this perspective more.
I do think it’s an open question though.