Cutbacks on health prevention policies: penny wise, pound foolish?

The recent economic slowdown affecting the developed countries has motivated a significant decrease in the governmental prevention and public health expenses, items which already accounted for a very residual part of the health budgets. The main aim of this Master’s Dissertation is to provide evidence in favor of the role of prevention in public health: using the National Child Development Study’s longitudinal dataset, we estimate the effect of a range of variables related to prevention on health outcomes in a health production function. Grounded on Grossman’s (1972) theoretical approach, the specification highlights smoking and obesity as the most important areas for policymaking enhancement, results which are in line with current concerns (Mokdad et al., 2004; WHO, 2014) and existing literature (Fielding, 1985; Swallen et al., 2005). Breastfeeding, a less conventional policy, is also shown to be strongly related to general health outcomes. In sum, no strong evidence is provided to unconditionally defend preventive policies.