Comment on Robert Fogel’s “Health, Human Capital & Economic Growth” IADB Workshop on Health, Human Development Potential and the Quality of Life – April – Washington DC Rodrigo R. Soares University of Maryland, Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, NBER and IZA

Main Points Nutrition as a source of growth. Physiological and technological changes interacting to generate a transformation of the human species  technophysio evolution. Physical differences across people in different areas of the world seem to reflect much more socioeconomic conditions than genetics/race. This process would explain 30% of the growth in income per capita in the UK over the last 200 years.

Implications 1/3 of most of the growth experienced by the UK would have been determined from changes in nutrition and its consequences  300%. UK from Maddison Year A.D.GDP pcGrowth % ,707139% ,714996% Note: Year 0 for all Western Europe.

Some Points Several important changes were taking place at the same time. How much of the change in nutrition was endogenous to this broader process and how much was a driving force? Initial improvements in nutrition and population expansion without a countervailing Malthusian mechanism: some technological change necessary.

Some Other Points Has this mechanism become less important over the 20 th century? –Factors associated with nutrition explain 90% of decline in French mortality between 1785 and 1870, but only 50% during the past century. Changes in health have become increasingly dissociate from income and nutrition, but have remained intimately linked to the behavior of other demographic variables. How important is this mechanism nowadays to explain the experience of countries that have already gone through the demographic transition?

Open Questions In the developed world: what do obesity trends mean from this perspective? In developing countries: have the reductions in mortality been too fast to be explained by technophysio evolution?