Comments on William D. Nordhaus's, 'Irving Fisher and the Contribution of Improved Longevity to Living Standards'

摘要

This essay discusses Fisher's contributions to life extension and to human capital theory. Bill Nordhaus's paper would, I think, have greatly pleased Irving Fisher. It brings together two major themes of Fisher's career: the economic value of improving the health of the population, and the measurement of economic quantities. After his recovery from tuberculosis, Fisher was a prolific writer on health issues, warning against alcohol, tobacco, stress, lack of exercise, and poor diet, sanitation, and hygiene as preventable causes of illness and death. He published more than 60 articles and pamphlets on health from 1910 to 1915 alone, not counting a dozen specifically on tuberculosis (Allen 1993: 139). The first 19 editions of Fisher's How to Live, written jointly with Dr. Eugene Lyman Fisk and first published in 1915, sold more than 400,000 copies in the United States by 1937, and the book was translated into Spanish, German, French, Polish, Russian, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Chinese, and Japanese (Sudela 1937: 443). In addition, Metropolitan Life distributed between 12 and 15 million copies of a pamphlet condensation of How to Live (Allen 1993: 140). Fisher donated all his royalties from this phenomenal bestseller to his Life Extension Institute.