  The dynamics of economies and infectious disease are inexorably linked:
economic well-being influences health (sanitation, nutrition, treatment
capacity, etc.) and health influences economic well-being (labor productivity
lost to sickness and disease). Often societies are locked into "poverty traps"
of poor health and poor economy. Here, using a simplified coupled
disease-economic model with endogenous capital growth we demonstrate the
formation of poverty traps, as well as ways to escape them. We suggest two
possible mechanisms of escape both motivated by empirical data: one, through an
influx of capital (development aid), and another through changing the
percentage of GDP spent on healthcare. We find that a large influx of capital
is successful in escaping the poverty trap, but increasing health spending
alone is not. Our results demonstrate that escape from a poverty trap may be
possible, and carry important policy implications in the world-wide
distribution of aid and within-country healthcare spending.
