Health, Human Capital and Regional Economic Growth:An Empirical Study on China

Abstract

In this paper, the effects of changes in regional health, education, physical capital and opening policy on economic growth are studied with an extended Cobb-Douglas production function. Data from 1997 to 2003 of 31 provinces are used to analyze the situation in China. The results show that elasticity of economic growth to health is about 0.06, and its contribution takes a rising trend as the income increases. The contributions of physical capital and education are still the main resources of economic growth in China, and the elasticity of these two factors is 0.452 and 0.127 respectively. Especially, the effect of these two factors in middle income level region is the largest. Therefore, investment in these regions is most helpful to economic growth. Openness policy is another important factor to economic growth, and its elasticity is about 0.104 in high income level regions, which should be used as a reference by middle and low income level regions.

Keywords

• Health, Education, Economic Growth, Panel Data