How Does Poor Health Contribute to Poverty? (PDF)

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Economy - Health Economics, grade: Distinction, London School of Economics (International Development), course: Msc Development Studies, language: English, abstract: Poverty has been identified as a menace to Africa's development. Some scholars have argued that poor health is a major contributing factor to poverty, inter alia. While this study grasps with the question of how poor health contributes to poverty, this paper will argue that poverty does strongly contribute to poor health and the reverse may be true as well.

Firstly, this paper will provide clarity on the poor health-poverty nexus concept and assumptions. Secondly, it will look at the main body in which it will discuss that poverty to a larger extent does lead to poor health and then the reverse causality as poor health can also lead to poverty.

This section will use Uganda as a case study because Uganda was a labeled success story with the fight against HIV/AIDS but just like any-other developing country, Uganda has a number of diseases exacerbated and sustained by poverty. This will then take the essay to the final section where it will emerge that health does play a pivotal role in development overtime and so developing countries need to deal with it by reducing poverty levels.