The Health and Wealth of Nations

Abstract

Because health and wealth are inter-dependent components of quality of life, it would be useful to combine them in one parameter. For this purpose, I created Country Health-Wealth = (10⁵⁾ (LE-F) (Health$/c)/(ABR) (MMR) (U5MR-F) (LEineq) (GINI), where 10⁵ is for convenience, LE-F is female life expectancy, Health$/c is health expenditure per capita, ABR is adolescent birth rate, MMR is maternal mortality ratio, U5MR-F is female under-five mortality rate, LEineq is life expectancy inequality, and GINI is the GINI coefficient, the most common measure of income inequality. I ignore units and ranked the 176 countries studied according to CHW, which varied from .003 for Central African Republic and Chad to 74,433,072 for Norway. The total CHW over all countries, 261,133,736, summarizes global quality of life. The plot of CHW values for these 176 countries vs their percentiles is L-shaped with the corner near the 81st percentile = 220,200. The 35 countries above this value are non-needy of CHW. The 141 countries below it is needy of it. The difference between a country’s actual CHW and 220,200 is the excess over that needed, or, if negative, the deficiency. I ranked the countries according to CHW excess and deficiency. For less than 12% of the total excess, all countries could be non-needy. I urge foreign aid from the non-needy countries according to their excess to the needy countries according to their deficiency. To be effective, this aid must diminish mortality rates and health and wealth disparity.