Research About The Economic Effects Of Anemia

Although China has experienced rapid economic growth over the past fewdecades, significant health and nutritional problems remain. Unfortunately, becauselittle work has been done to track basic diseases, such as iron-deficiency anemia, theexact prevalence of these health problem is often unknown. The goal of this paper areto assess the prevalence of anemia in China and identify the correlation of anemia andwage, anemia and agricultural labor productivity. We use data from the2009wave ofthe China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), including hemoglobin measurementsand9provinces in China. Our baseline data show that the overall anemia rate is13.4%using the WHO’s blood hemoglobin thresholds (1968). This rate implies that inChina’s more developed Central and Eastern regions up to180million people areanemia. Moreover, we use the method of least squares and Heckman two-stepestimation. We find that anemia has a significant positive effect on wages. Aftercorrecting the selectivity bias and using the healthy self-assessment index and height,we got the same conclusion. Unfortunately, we did not find the significant correlationof anemia and agricultural labor productivity. This paper analyzed anemicinterventions public policy at home and abroad. Although government’s special actionfor anemia intervention had some success, biggest negatives are locality and nonpersistent. The paper puts forward policy suggestions accordingly.