Journal of Health Economics 23 (2004) 663–671 The demand for health and health concerns after 30 years Arleen A. Leibowitz ∗ UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656, USA Available online 28 July 2004 Abstract Michael Grossman’s seminal model stressed that health production requires both goods and time. Yet recent empirical health research focuses primarily on personal medical care to the exclusion of other inputs to health. Future research should place greater emphasis on the roles of non-medical consumption goods, population level inputs and time in producing health capital. Improved informa- tion technology will allow researchers to dissect how education promotes efficiency in combining goods and time to produce health. Economic analyses of child health, which is the antecedent of adult health, must proceed in tandem with medical advances in understanding health development in childhood. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: I12; I11; I15 Keywords: Health; Demand; Grossman model; Insurance; Medical services 1. Introduction It has been 30 years since Michael Grossman’s influential book, ‘The Demand for Health: a Theoretical and Empirical Investigation’ (Grossman, 1972) revolutionized the economic analysis of health. Grossman drew a clear distinction between health and medical care ser- vices, building on the insight that consumers combine their own time with medical services to create the commodity health. Using the key concept of home production elaborated in Gary Becker’s seminal work, ‘A Theory of the Allocation of Time’ (Becker, 1965), Gross- man tailored the model to suit the health care case by incorporating an investment motive in addition to the consumption motive. ∗ Tel.: +1 310 206 8653. E-mail address: arleen@ucla.edu (A.A. Leibowitz). 0167-6296/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2004.04.005