This project, building on existing detailed survey work on households in Accra, will obtain new empirical information on the links between health and wealth on the household level. The study will distinguish overall morbidity in household members and partition it into reproductive and non-reproductive illness. By re-interviewing households surveyed in the Women’s Health Study of Accra 2003, we shall obtain detailed estimates of the effects of intervening episodes of illness on household production and income. The 2003 data include self-reported morbidity for all adult women as well as medically-ascertained diagnoses backed up with biological tests. Based on this medical and socio-economic information, we can identify households from a variety of different health backgrounds, and closely follow their economic activities and economic outcomes. A parallel study of women’s health, a larger 5-year study on Health, Place and Poverty in the city being undertaken by researchers from ISSER and the Harvard School of Public Health, will provide broader health data on a representative sample of 3,200 households with the 400 households used for the economic study embedded within this larger sample. We shall not only analyze the dynamic evolution of employment, household income and expenditure patterns, but also the long-term effects of health on family-building and household composition. The reverse links from household prosperity or poverty to health will also be investigated.

Contact Information:
Allan G. Hill, ahill@hsph.harvard.edu; Ernest Aryeetey, aryeetey@ug.edu.gh; Kelly Blanchard, kblanchard@ibisreproductivehealth.org, Harvard University and University of Ghana, Ibis Reproductive Health