The development of nations conditions the disease space

Antonios Garas (), Sophie Guthmuller () and Athanasios Lapatinas
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Antonios Garas: ETH Zurich

No 2019-09, JRC Working Papers in Economics and Finance from Joint Research Centre, European Commission

Abstract: Using the economic complexity methodology on data for disease prevalence in 195 countries during the period of 1990-2016, we propose two new metrics for quantifying the relatedness between diseases, or the ‘disease space’ of countries. With these metrics, we analyze the geography of diseases and empirically investigate the effect of economic development on the health complexity of countries. We show that a higher income per capita increases the complexity of countries’ diseases. Furthermore, we build a disease-level index that links a disease to the average level of GDP per capita of the countries for which they have a relative disease disadvantage. With this index, we highlight the link between economic development and the complexity of diseases and illustrate, at the disease-level, how increases in income per capita are associated with more complex diseases.

Keywords: health complexity; disease complexity; economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 E7 I15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published by Publications office of the European Union, 2019

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https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC116399 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The development of nations conditions the disease space (2021)
Working Paper: The development of nations conditions the disease space (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jrs:wpaper:201909

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