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The Annals of Regional Science

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22-01-2022 | Special Issue Paper

Will the economic growth benefit public health? Health vulnerability, urbanization and COVID-19 in the USA

Authors: Ye Fan, Ming Fang, Xin Zhang, Yongda Yu

Published in: The Annals of Regional Science | Issue 1/2023

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Abstract

Economic growth has a significant impact on health vulnerability primarily through the process of urbanization. This paper conducts a pioneer study by analyzing the impact of regional economic growth and urbanization on the public health vulnerability in the 51 states and territories of the USA from 2011 to 2018 with a fixed-effect panel data regression model. We construct an epidemiological vulnerability index (EVI) using regional smoking, diabetes, obesity, and hypertension, collect CDC social vulnerability index (SVI) as state-level public health vulnerability status, and use COVID-19 to test the actual effect of health vulnerability. The preliminary results show that higher regional economic growth is related to lower EVI and SVI, while urbanization is positively associated with regional health vulnerability and the severity of COVID-19 from case rate and death rate. Robustness check with unemployment shows the same result. We conclude that economic growth is related to lower public health vulnerability, and urbanization has negative public health benefits. Our finding indicates an urgent need to balance the externalities generated by economic development and urbanization trends on public health vulnerability by promoting reasonable medical resource distribution, health practices and safety, improving social and environmental justice, and other health management measures.

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Title: Will the economic growth benefit public health? Health vulnerability, urbanization and COVID-19 in the USA
Authors: Ye Fan
Ming Fang
Xin Zhang
Yongda Yu
Publication date: 22-01-2022
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in: The Annals of Regional Science / Issue 1/2023
Print ISSN: 0570-1864
Electronic ISSN: 1432-0592
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-021-01103-9

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