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In recent years, significant advances have been made in better understanding the complex relationships between health and development. This reflects the combined effects of methodological innovations at both the theoretical and empirical level, the integration of insights from the biological and health sciences into economic analyses as well as improvements in the quantity and quality of data on population health and socio-economic status. To provide a foundation for discussing these advances, we describe static and dynamic models of the evolution of health over the life course in conjunction with the inter-relationships between health, other human capital outcomes and economic prosperity. Facts about health and development at both the aggregate and individual levels are presented along with a discussion of the importance of measurement. We proceed to review the empirical literature with a goal of …