Last week the IPPR’s Commission on Health and Prosperity published its final report. The report not only makes a number of important recommendations for future health policy, but it also focuses on how better health can also improve economic outcomes. I must admit, when I was first asked to be a member of that Commission, I did have a minor concern about this. I felt that the argument for better health was strong enough on its own and it didn’t need an additional economic payoff as part of its justification.
That may surprise you coming from an economist, but it is actually a basic part of academic economics. Academic economists typically write papers where the aim is to increase individual and social utility, not economic growth. As countless studies have shown, a person’s health is a key element of their happiness, wellbeing and therefore utility. [1] But I also understood that power in the UK lies in the Treasury, so making the links between better health and a more productive economy are important.
However, what I didn’t know when the Commission was being set up was just how crucial the interactions between health and the economy would become for the UK in the years after Covid. Here is a chart from the report:
The pandemic led to a rise in economic inactivity (those in the potential workforce not working) in many countries, but that rise was partially or completely reversed once the pandemic was over in nearly every country. The exception is the UK, where what had been a downward trend in inactivity became an upward trend. The report estimates that since the pandemic just under a million workers have left the labour force in the UK due to sickness (page 20