Health Economics

   CONTENTS  

Foreword

Research Structures

Energy, Environment, and Biodiversity

Humanities and Ethics

Culture and Education

Society and Development

Information and Communication Technology

Biology and Health

Research Structures and Researchers

About

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The role of health in the economy

The Nucleus for Studies on Health Economics, linked to the Graduate Program in Development Economics, is led by Professor Paulo de Andrade Jacinto. Created in 2006, the Group focuses on the emerging field of health economics and is beginning to provide some research results, mainly due to the character of plurality maintained in the investigations.

Health economics has interested many researchers in recent years because there is a series of interfaces among different fields that generate different study areas. Research by the Nucleus, for example, addresses the planning of health spending and the origin of these resources. In addition, analysis has been performed to verify the economic losses that a particular disease generates in the labor market, taking into consideration the lowered productivity of a sick worker. When sick, the worker dedicates fewer hours to his craft, resulting in a smaller yield. In this research area, there are studies related to tuberculosis, obesity, and diabetes because they are illnesses that cause a large impact in the market and in the life of the worker. Recently, there was a project on the impact that economic indicators have had on health. Published in the Journal of Public Health (Revista de Saúde Pública), it showed that periods of recession or a fall in income negatively affect individual health status.

Taking into consideration that there is currently a large concern with the decrease in the birth rate and with the increase in longevity, with the potential to cause a decrease in the labor supply in the future, one of the studies analyzed the behavior of the elderly in the labor market. It was found that they are more productive than the younger generation, among other aspects. In addition, the impact of the health of the elderly was identified over the number of hours offered on the labor market.

The child population is also a focus of investigation. Based on data obtained from newborn babies in Pelotas, RS, in 1982, a large study was performed to evaluate health spending incurred by families with children at various stages of childhood.