Most people do not understand what a health economist is. Where do they work? What do they do? How do they spend their time? How are they trained?
A paper by Morrisey and Cawley (Health Econ 2008) attempts to answer this question. The authors conducted an online survey to achieve a better understanding of what health economists do.
Training
Ninety-three percent of health economists have a Ph.D. A few health economists have an MD (2.6%), an RN (1%) or a JD (<1%) in addition to their PhD. Of those with a Ph.D., 72% have a Ph.D. in Economics. Below are a list of the economics departments that have trained the most health economists in the sample:
| Institution | Health Economists trained in the sample |
| Wisconsin | 16 |
| Chicago | 11 |
| Michigan | 9 |
| Yale | 9 |
| Harvard | 8 |
| MIT | 8 |
| Univ. of Washington | 8 |
| Maryland | 7 |
| CUNY | 7 |
| Stanford | 6 |
| UC-Berkeley | 6 |
| Boston University | 5 |
| Washington Univ. (St. Louis) | 5 |
Seventy-six percent of health economists wrote a health related dissertation, even though 2/3 of graduate programs lacked a formal health economics field. For instance, at UCSD I am writing my dissertation on health economics even though there is not established program.
Employment
Where do health economists work? Most work in academia (64%), but a large percentage also work for the government (12%), NGOs (15%) or the private sector (9%). Of those who are academically employed, below is a chart detailing where their principal appointment is located.
| Appointment | Percentage |
| Public Health | 26% |
| Medicine | 18% |
| Arts & Science | 17% |
| Business | 16% |
| Public Policy | 6% |
| Other | 17% |
| Total | 100% |
| Economics Dept. | 24% |
For those who work in public health or medical school about 50% of their salary is made up from funding from external grants and contracts.
Research Interest
Below is a chart detailing the subspecialty of the health economists in the survey. Respondents could choose multiple options.
| Subspeciality | Percentage |
| Behavior of Individuals (e.g.: Labor Econ) | 50% |
| Behavior of Firms (e.g.: Industrial Organization) | 34% |
| Government policies (e.g.: Public Finance) | 50% |
| Health Insurance | 48% |
| Outcomes Research (CEA, CBA, Burden of Illness) | 50% |
| Other | 31% |
After reading this post, hopefully you now have some idea of who health economists are and what they do.
- Morrisey MA, Cawley J. 2008. “US Health Economists: Who we are and what we do” Health Economics, 17(4): 535-543.