How does non-ocular (non-blinding) onchocerciasis, a skin disease, affect the economic life of workers who suffer from it? It reduces the daily earnings of permanent workers affected by it by roughly 10 to 15 percent.
Teams from two institutions studied the economic impact of health status on productivity and income. They studied whether onchocercal skin disease caused economic damage to the labor force at a coffee plantation in southwest Ethiopia, and how much.
The research team estimated the daily wage equation for wage employees. Empirical analysis revealed that permanent male employees, the core of the plantation labor force, suffer significant losses in economic productivity (in the form of lower daily wages earned) as a result of onchocercal skin disease.
Depending on the severity of onchocercal skin disease, and controlling for such factors as age, daily wages were 10 to 15 percent lower among those exhibiting skin-related problems.
This paper—a joint product of the Onchocerciasis Coordination Unit, Africa Human Development Department, World Bank, and the Institute of Pathobiology, University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia—is part of a larger effort to improve understanding of the economic effects of disease and debility. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "Health and Labor Productivity: Economic Impact of Onchocercal Skin Disease" (RPO 680-81). Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Aehyung Kim, room J10-046, telephone 202-473-5029, fax 202-522-3157, Internet address akim@worldbank.org. (12 pages)
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