Open AccessThe impact of diseases on economic growth: the case of Viet Nam
Author(s) -
Phạm Thành Thái,
Nhàn Nguyễn Thanh Lê
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
khoa học và công nghệ: kinh tế - luật - quản lý
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2588-1051
DOI - 10.32508/stdjelm.v3i4.585
Subject(s) - life expectancy , malaria , public health , productivity , workforce , infectious disease (medical specialty) , tuberculosis , dengue fever , economic growth , development economics , environmental health , disease , economics , medicine , immunology , population , nursing , pathology
The spread of diseases is a global challenge which affects life expectancy, productivity and economic growth. A healthy workforce has a faster acquisition of new knowledge to apply it to production and maintains high productivity, thereby promoting economic growth. On the contrary, a disease-infected workforce may have a low level of productivity, high expenses for disease treatment, insufficient health and finance to acquire new knowledge and as such, slowing down the economic growth. This study examines the implications of major infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS, dengue, malaria and tuberculosis on the economic growth of Vietnam. The cointegration regression model with the ordinary least squares method is applied in the estimation procedure on a time series dataset obtained from World Bank, World Health Organization, UN and the Ministry of Health of Vietnam from 1986 to 2016. The results indicate that the number of new patients of any major infectious disease is negatively related to per-capita income. In particular, a 1% increase in the number of new patients with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, dengue and malaria leads to a decrease of 0.022%, 0.095%, 0.015% and 0.057% in yearly income, respectively. These findings have significant policy implications in terms of improving the effectiveness of the prevention of infectious diseases, protection of public health so as to boost the economic growth of the country. In addition, the results also provide add to the current literature evidence of the relationship between public health and economic growth in Vietnam.