of the PPF between D and F is steep, showing a large drop in health for only a small gain in education.

The lesson is not that society is likely to make an extreme choice like devoting no resources to education at

point A or no resources to health at point F. Instead, the lesson is that the gains from committing additional

marginal resources to education depend on how much is already being spent. If on the one hand, very few

resources are currently committed to education, then an increase in resources used for education can bring

relatively large gains. On the other hand, if a large number of resources are already committed to education,

then committing additional resources will bring relatively smaller gains.

This pattern is common enough that economists have given it a name: the law of increasing opportunity cost,

which holds that as production of a good or service increases, the marginal opportunity cost of producing it
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