Petter Lundborg, Kaveh Majlesi, Martin Salm and Johan Vikström

Project summary

Health as human capital: returns on early investments

Health can be viewed as a form of human capital in which individuals can invest and from which they may derive future returns. This research programme aims to study the long-term returns to good health early in life, and to investments in health, in terms of economic outcomes later in life. If good health early in life makes people more productive when investing in their health later on, small initial differences in health may lead to substantial long-term differences through an effect similar to compound interest. Even small improvements in early-life health may therefore have considerable economic value to society.

 

However, there is a significant lack of empirical studies that convincingly measure the long-term returns to early-life health and health investments in terms of productivity and other economic outcomes. This project aims to generate new and important knowledge in this area by linking anonymised health and population registers and using quasi-experimental methods that allow us to draw conclusions about cause and effect.

 

More specifically, the project will focus on three areas:

• the long-term returns to good health and health investments early in life;
• circumstances in which the value of early-life health is particularly high; and
• the intergenerational transmission of health.

 

Within these areas, a range of specific research questions will be examined through empirical studies.