Macroeconomics

Abstract

Health and survival of all organisms depends on the availability of nutrients, water, and a hospitable environment. Social animals like humans rely on social institutions to help provide these material foundations of health. Our foremost institutions are economies which govern the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. Microeconomics describes how individuals and households make decisions to produce and consume services. Macroeconomics describes the aggregate outcomes of these individual household behaviors. Because macroeconomic phenomena emerge at the population level, a thorough understanding of individual human behavior, while necessary, will not guarantee insight into the functioning of the macroeconomy. An analogy to the world of health is instructive: Clinical medicine concerns the restoration and preservation of health at the individual level while public health describes measures to restore and preserve the health of populations. Physiological processes that are important for individual health become mere background for the predominant demographic, social, and epidemiological forces that determine the health of populations. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.