# The development of nations conditions the disease space

## TL;DR

This paper introduces new metrics to analyze the relationship between economic development and disease complexity across countries, revealing that higher income levels are associated with more complex disease profiles.

## Contribution

It develops two novel metrics for disease relatedness, linking economic development to disease complexity and providing a disease-level index related to GDP per capita.

## Key findings

- Higher income per capita correlates with increased disease complexity.
- The disease-level index shows more complex diseases are prevalent in wealthier countries.
- Economic development influences the diversity and complexity of diseases in nations.

## Abstract

Using the economic complexity methodology on data for disease prevalence in 195 countries during the period of 1990-2016, we propose two new metrics for quantifying the relatedness between diseases, or the `disease space' of countries. With these metrics, we analyze the geography of diseases and empirically investigate the effect of economic development on the health complexity of countries. We show that a higher income per capita increases the complexity of countries' diseases. Furthermore, we build a disease-level index that links a disease to the average level of GDP per capita of the countries that have prevalent cases of the disease. With this index, we highlight the link between economic development and the complexity of diseases and illustrate, at the disease-level, how increases in income per capita are associated with more complex diseases