Endogenous lifetime and economic growth: the roleof the tax rate

This paper revisits the health-economic growth nexus from the seminal contribution of Chakraborty (J Econ Theory 116(1):119–137, 2004). In his two periods overlapping generations model with a lifetime depending on public health expenditures, I study the influence of the tax rate on the economy. This enables me to determine in which cases the health policy can spur economic growth. I present three results: (i) In the endogenous growth case, the health policy can eradicate some poverty traps. (ii) The growth-maximizing tax rate is 0 in low-income countries. (iii) The steady state income level is an inverted U-shaped function or a decreasing function of the tax rate.