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This literature review focuses on education and health in its examination of the role that households and families play in choosing how to invest the human capital of their members. The introductory section describes the history of the development of economic models of the household and reviews how theoretical developments have become linked with data collection. The second section of the report looks at the effects of income on nutritional status and the reverse influence of nutrition (health) on labor productivity (income). Despite the controversies existing in the literature and the difficulties in choosing among the array of solutions to defined problems there is little doubt that investments in education and health enhance productivity fertility child health and child educational attainment. In an attempt to shed light on the underlying mechanisms in these relationships Section 3 focuses on the estimation of reduced form demands for human capital and considers the measurement of human capital; the effects of determinants such as education household resources and community resources; endogenous program placement and selective migration; and the possible estimation bias imposed by fertility and mortality selection. Section 4 continues this investigation by considering the process underlying the production of human capital in terms of the empirical issues involved in estimation of static and dynamic production functions as well as applications to child health and applications to educational attainment. Section 5 relates labor productivity to education and considers data issues the functional form of studies ability family background and school quality. Recent developments in modeling household behavior in a dynamic setting are reviewed in Section 6 and Section 7 describes links among individuals households and families. The concluding section notes that continued integration of survey data collection with theoretical frameworks will lead to a substantial improvement in our understanding of the magnitude of the significance of the effects predicted by the theory.