Health Loss Caused by the Three Major Disease to Regional Wealth

Capital Approach in Japanese Prefectures

Abstract

Securing sustainability is a major concern for local economy. Capital approach, which shows present value of capital stocks, is useful in understanding welfare of future generations. Inclusive Wealth Index （IWI） can judge the sustainability in a local economy when the index increases. In Japan, decreasing health capital is a main problem impeding the IWI growth, even though only long-lived aspects of health is accounted in the index. If the IWI includes depreciation of health caused by disease, the IWI might provide more serious perspective of Japan.

This study estimates the health capital from two aspects; the value of discount years from present age up to the average life expectancy （long-lived capital） ; the value of discount disability adjustment loss years （capital burden of disease）. We focus on the capital burden of three major disease; then we estimate the health capital in each Japanese prefecture at 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2014. We obtain the following two results.

1） Health loss caused by cancer was the largest impact among three diseases, 33,055 Yen per capita. Stroke and ischemic heart disease showed smaller capital burden of diseases, 15,687 Yen per capita, and 7,041 Yen per capita, respectively. When we focus on spatial distribution of the health loss, the three-metropolitan area has relatively high damage by about 17% than the other areas.

2） From the effects of disease loss to changes in IWI per capita, cancer deteriorated the IWI trend; however, stroke and ischemic heart disease ameliorated the IWI. On the other hand, cancer in the three-metropolitan area revealed largest negative effect to the IWI; stroke in rural area showed largest positive effect to the IWI.