国家经济增长因素研究的宏观经济学留学作业

发布时间：2016-12-02 07:54

有一些因素会影响并作用于国家的经济增长，例如自然资源、 人力资本、 技术、 基础设施和更多。在过去，大多数经济学家会把人力资本的重要性推倒在一旁，，并设置自然资源在金字塔的顶端。但马上，他们意识到一些国家的高水平自然资源带着低的 GDP;否则，相反地，一些低水平的天然资源的国家有高的GDP。这种现象导致不同想法在跳跃，最终，人力资本已跳进的核心问题。
那么，人力资本是什么？人力资本是生产性投资领域，体现在人类的人，包括技能、 能力、 理想、 健康和地点，往往产生于教育、 在职培训计划和医疗护理 （托 & 史密斯，2011年） 的支出。所作发言中，我们可以看到人力资本包括附加在人体内，在那里我们可以总结那些东西以及缩小问题到两个基本问题︰ 健康和教育。

Health and education are two inseparable things that cannot stand by their own feet. Health may affect education by an assumption that when a person is healthy, it is obviously easier for them to absorb education given by the education systems (school, college, etc). While on the other hand, education systems help people to understand the importance of health. They thought people to keep an eye on hygiene, to understand the danger of cigarettes, to aware of calories in their foods, and many small-but-important things that are not mentioned beyond education systems.

Since health and education became the main problems of economic growth, many developed countries have made a big investment in both sectors. But for developing countries with restricted budgets, it is not possible to invest in both sectors in a same amount. Therefore, they need to choose in which sector they would like to invest more, and in which sector they would invest less. This issue became another problem for those developing countries and to make a decision, they should count the opportunity cost that appears among the alternatives.

From World Bank's survey we could see that in 2009 the percentage of expenditure from GDP that allocated by United States for education is only 5.404%, while the budget for health is 17.607%. On the other hand, Indonesia has a different method to distribute their money. From Indonesia's GDP, in 2009 the amount of money allocated for education is approximately 3.526%, while the money allocated for health is only about 2.480%. We could see a difference in this two countries way of distributing their money; United States give an extra attention to health sector, while Indonesia allocate more in education sector (even though the percentage is relatively close between health and education).

This essay will give an explanation about the importance of health and education in general and for Indonesia as a developing country in specific. When the importance of health and education were figured out, this essay will try to choose a better policy that should be made by Indonesia; whether to spend their money more in the education sector or to spend it in the health sector.

人力资本背后的理论(教育和健康)——Theory Behind Human Capital (Education and Health)

Health and education are both important in term of economic growth for every country. They are closely related one to another; since higher level of health may influence education to get higher to, vice versa. Health influence education in many things, for instance healthy people surely tend to absorb lessons more effective and efficient, and of course with healthiness they could attend school more frequently. There are several findings that support the statement, for instance in northeast Brazil undernourished children fall out 20% in test scores. On the other hand, education also affects health in lots of ways too, for example higher educated people tend to have higher awareness about personal hygiene, healthy foods, good sanitations, etc. There is noteworthy research compatible with the statement that says that the more educated a mother is, the healthier her children will be. This interaction make both of them related to each other and hence, we cannot separate them into independent variables.

Countries with higher income tends to have higher education and health level, this phenomena is a good reason to make people believe that higher education and health could only be afford by high level income people. But on contrary, higher level of education and health are the factors that push income to increase. This causality causes a fundamental problem and the government needs to make a good policy that could combine the three of them; income, health, and education. Some say that the problem could be solved by increasing the amount of income, but in fact, the increase in income doesn't make a significant improvement on children's health and education. Many evidences show that even if people's income is sufficient enough to provide an appropriate education and health for their children, they rarely prioritize it in their expenditure budget. Therefore, raising people's income is not a necessary solution to increase their education and health level.

Education and health is not in the top of people's priority for many reasons. People with low income surely put basic needs such as foods, housing, and clothing as their priority. For middle income people that barely meet their needs, they definitely will force their children to work in order to help them earn more money for living. This is the issue that happens in under-developing countries where more than half of the populations are still struggling with income problem. When talking about middle-upper class people, I believe that most of them especially urban people have already had high awareness of the importance of education and health. But if in reality it turns out that some of them still did not provide sufficient health and education for their children, the most logical reason that might happen is they still follow the conventional behavior, habit, and culture until now. This issue is actually also as well, an education issue.

To be a priority, education itself should have a bargaining power. Hence, like many other things in economy, education has its own supplies and demands. From Todaro and Smith (2011), we could see that the demands for education are considered with two principals: expected income in the future and educational costs that should be paid. Students will consider getting higher education when they have an expectation to get higher income in the future because of their knowledge. But more than anything, they will consider the costs they must bear when taking education; whether it is worth it to be taken or not. This will bring out another opportunity costs issue, and different people will have a different preference and therefore, different result.

In the supply side, quantity of education is mostly explained by political processes. Number of education being supplied is largely affected by the amount of money allocated for education sectors and other political issues. Since the only substantial thing that affected supply of education is political processes, we could assume that the supply side of education is remaining constant conforming to government expenditure. And back again, government expenditure is in turn influenced by total demand of education.

Another fundamental issue regarding education is the social and private costs and benefits. To make it short, private costs and benefits curve's trends are both inclining from time to time (primary, secondary, and tertiary school), but the private benefits are far above the costs and the gap are even larger in the tertiary school period. It means that the opportunity cost for people as an individual to take higher education is low, and logically they should take those higher educations. On contrary in social costs and benefits curve, the benefits curve is first inclining and in one point it tends to decline. This phenomenon leads to an intersection between the cost and the benefit curves in the tertiary level. The curve shows that the benefits for social are first also higher than its costs, but gradually the benefits starts to decrease and suddenly in one point (tertiary period) the benefits are lower than the costs. This means that people as a society did not get any return when they sent other people to higher education level, and moreover, they even have to pay the costs. This phenomenon could well-described the reason behind people's choice to not put education as their first priority.

Health, on the other hand, also has lots of problem that should be solved. In many under-developing countries, especially in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa still suffer with many kinds of disease such as Malaria, HIV/AIDS, Cholera, Dengue, etc. Besides the disease burden, health problems appear in other form for instance lack of sanitation, contaminated and scarce water, undernourished children, and many more. These problems happen most in under-developed countries, while developed countries are relatively have already had good health systems.

These health problems are actually affecting people's productivity. Further research has made about this statement and the result supports it, the research shows that in Cote d'Ivoire men with health issues are estimated to get 19% lower income comparing to healthier men. This finding supposes to be a booster for people to increase their awareness in term of health issues.

With all the theories and further researches that most of which supports the importance of health and education, government logically have to increase their concern in both issues. But back again, with restricted budget they unfortunately have to choose in which issue they would like to invest more.

关键性分析——Critical Analysis

Education and health are two fundamental problems that appear in every country. But every country also has a different policy in distributing their national budget; whether to stress the money in education sector or in health sector. Some country like United States allocate its money more in health sector, while some country like Indonesia allocate the budget more in education sector. This decision must made by several consideration; maybe United States believe that their education systems are well and stable enough so that they did not have to invest a lot in that sector anymore. While maybe, Indonesia aware that their education systems are not sufficient in term of comparing to other countries.

Indonesia as a developing country actually already has a good education policy. One of the well-known policies is the obligatory to study nine years in school. Moreover, next year Indonesia is about to initiate a new policy: the obligatory to study nine years in school is extended to twelve years. The policy made by Ministry of Education and Culture is really good to help education in Indonesia being developed, and it actually works. From the data published by BPS, in 2010 Indonesia's number of School Participation Rate (SPR) for 7-12 years children has reached 96%, while SPR for 13-15 years children is 67.28%. The number of School Participation Rate for 7-12 years children in Indonesia is relatively high even comparing to United States with 94.5%. But the SPR for 13-15 years children is currently still in a lower level, highlighting United States has 89.5% of secondary school students enrollment.

Besides School Participation Rate (SPR), another indicator that could also be use in term of calculating education level is illiterate rate. Data from BPS shows that in 2009, Indonesia's illiterate rate for under 15 years people is 7.42%, for 15-45 years people is 1.8%, and for over 45 years people is 18.68%. We could obviously see that number of illiterate rate in the productive ages is the smallest one and number of illiterate rate in the elderly ages is the highest one. This data shows that there is a significant development in education for the past years.

But unfortunately, we could still found disparity in education's distribution. For instance, in 2005 SUSENAS's survey we could see that the smallest number of illiterate rate is in DKI Jakarta for only 1.68% and the highest number of illiterate rate is in Papua for 28.42%. The gap between DKI Jakarta and Papua is too wide, and this indicates a high inequality between both regions.

In the health sector, there are lots of things that could be the indicators to show calculate its level. For instance there are fertility rate, mortality rate, life expectancy rate, and sanitation facilities. Indonesia's Health Department has already made programs that could help to increase the quality of health in Indonesia. But does it work?

Based on what the World Bank said, fertility rate represents the number of children that every woman could give birth to among her productivity ages. And from World Bank data, we could see that Indonesia's fertility rate is 2.145. The trend of Indonesia and most of other countries' fertility rate is declining, since there is an effort to slow down the number of population growth.

For the under five ages mortality rate, Indonesia's number is 34.8. Under five ages mortality rate shows the probability that a baby will die before reaching age five. This number is relatively high comparing to neighbor countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, and Singapore. Among those southeast countries, Singapore attained the lowest number for only 2.7. This number is very low even comparing to United States with 7.6 and United Kingdom with 5.4. Seeing small numbers of other countries make Indonesia looks like a monster that murder many under-five children. And this is another problem that should be fixed as soon as possible.

Indonesia's life expectancy at birth in 2009 is 68.470 years. This number shows that a baby born could expect to live for about 68 years onwards their life assuming that the prevailing pattern stays the same throughout their lives. Again, this number shows a not-so-good number comparing to other countries that attained higher number of life expectancy. Singapore, for instance, has a life expectancy for about 81 years and slightly lower than it, United Kingdom has a life expectancy for 80 years.

From all the data that have mentioned above, we could see that Indonesia's education and health sector are both insufficient enough comparing to other countries. These unsolved problems are probably because of the lack budget that provided for both sectors (only approximately 2.5% for health and 3.5% for education). But if comparing to yearly accomplishment, we could not denied that Indonesia also has an improvement in both sectors. This might be a result of good government policy that inevitably being obeyed by the society (for instance Wajib Belajar Sembilan Tahun program and Keluarga Harapan program).

But back to the main question of this essay again, which sector should Indonesia choose to invest more? Another research by World Bank that conducts 83 developing countries tells that 10 countries with the highest real GDP growth and GNP per capita in 1960 and 1977 are countries with 16% higher average literacy rate comparing to other 83 countries. Moreover, countries with the lowest illiteracy rate also earned the lowest real GDP growth. This study shows a significant effect caused by education in term of income (GDP). While on the other hand, so far there are no sufficient researches that could prove that health affects income significantly. There are no proofs that verify health affects directly to people's income. To be more convincing, there are lots of unhealthy people that reach more success in term of income than healthy people.

Facts that have been mentioned above leads to a consideration that education actually affects level of income more significantly than health. Health undeniably also has a contribution in determining income, but the significant level might be much lower than education's contribution.

Indonesia as a developing country has an aim to increase its nation's welfare, and the most suitable factor that could determine 'welfare' of course is income. So in order to fulfill this purpose, Indonesia has to choose a policy that could support their vision. And the most suitable policy to support the aim between health and education are obviously: education.

结论——Conclusion

Education and health are both fundamental problems that affect every country's growth rate. These two problems could not be separated one to another since they influence each other, for instance healthier children could absorb lessons more efficient and educated men tend to have higher awareness in term of health such as hygiene, sanitation, and nutrition. Ideally, one country should not choose one of the sectors (health and education) and invest in both of them equally. But unfortunately, most developing countries with restricted budget should make up their mind and choose in which sector they would invest more.

Indonesia as a developing country of course faces the same problem. Under the restricted budget, Indonesia has to choose wisely in what sector they would like to develop first. Whether to invest first in education and as a consequence there would be lack of health systems, or to invest in health and therefore would be a low education level.

From former theories and studies we find out that education affects income rate (GDP) more significant comparing to health and this finding should be a base for Indonesia to make their decision. Hence, Indonesia should pick education as their first step to develop its country. It is not that health is less important or whatsoever, but this is a matter of urgency level since we could not choose both because of the budget problem.

So the suggestions for Indonesia's government in using their education expenditure are to build more proper school with affordable price, to distribute the education equally among every region existed, and to induce the fighting spirit and competitiveness of getting higher education by giving lots of scholarship for bright students and less fortunate students.

本文编号：201422