IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v34y2002i3p339-350.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The economic evaluation of health programmes: why discount health consequences more than monetary consequences?

Author

Listed:
  • Angelina Lazaro
  • Ramon Barberan
  • Encarnacion Rubio

Abstract

There is currently general agreement amongst economists that the discount rate to compute the present value of benefits and costs in the economic evaluation of public policies is defined according to the social time preference approach. However, whether this rate has to be used for the discount of non-monetary health consequences is a question for which there is no satisfactory reply. In this paper, it is argued that such a reply rests on the estimation of the relationship between the individual time preference for health and money in the contexts of private and social choice. In support of this argument an empirical analysis has been carried out in which the individuals making-up a representative sample of the population of Zaragoza (Spain) have been faced with a series of hypothetical inter-temporal choices. Their replies have implicitly revealed their temporal preference rates and have led to the conclusion that health consequences are discounted at a higher rate than monetary consequences. This would appear to be contrary to the standard practice applied in the economic valuation of health programmes.

Suggested Citation

  • Angelina Lazaro & Ramon Barberan & Encarnacion Rubio, 2002. "The economic evaluation of health programmes: why discount health consequences more than monetary consequences?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 339-350.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:34:y:2002:i:3:p:339-350
    DOI: 10.1080/00036840110043758
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840110043758
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036840110043758?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John A. Cairns, 1994. "Valuing future benefits," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 3(4), pages 221-229, July.
    2. Gretchen B. Chapman & Arthur S. Elstein, 1995. "Valuing the Future," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 15(4), pages 373-386, October.
    3. Samuelson, William & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1988. "Status Quo Bias in Decision Making," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 7-59, March.
    4. Marjon M. Van Der Pol & John A. Cairns, 2000. "Negative and zero time preference for health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 9(2), pages 171-175, March.
    5. Cairns, John & Van der Pol, Marjon, 1997. "Constant and decreasing timing aversion for saving lives," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 45(11), pages 1653-1659, December.
    6. Amartya K. Sen, 1967. "Isolation, Assurance and the Social Rate of Discount," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 81(1), pages 112-124.
    7. Emmett B. Keeler & Shan Cretin, 1983. "Discounting of Life-Saving and Other Nonmonetary Effects," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(3), pages 300-306, March.
    8. Maureen L. Cropper & Sema K. Aydede & Paul R. Portney, 1991. "Discounting Human Lives," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 73(5), pages 1410-1415.
    9. Michael Parsonage & Henry Neuburger, 1992. "Discounting and health benefits," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 1(1), pages 71-76, April.
    10. Cropper, Maureen L & Aydede, Sema K & Portney, Paul R, 1994. "Preferences for Life Saving Programs: How the Public Discounts Time and Age," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 243-265, May.
    11. Elias Mossialos, 1997. "Citizens' Views on Health Care Systems in the 15 Member States of The European Union," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 6(2), pages 109-116, March.
    12. Angelina Lazaro & Ramon Barberan & Encarnacion Rubio, 2001. "Private and social time preferences for health and money: an empirical estimation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(4), pages 351-356, June.
    13. Jan Abel Olsen, 1993. "Time preferences for health gains: An empirical investigation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 2(3), pages 257-265, October.
    14. Peter G. Warr & Brian D. Wright, 1981. "The Isolation Paradox and the Discount Rate for Benefit-Cost Analysis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 96(1), pages 129-145.
    15. Ben A. Van Hout, 1998. "Discounting costs and effects: a reconsideration," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 7(7), pages 581-594, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lydia Lawless & Andreas Drichoutis & Rodolfo Nayga, 2013. "Time preferences and health behaviour: a review," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-19, December.
    2. Lazaro, Angelina & Barberan, Ramon & Rubio, Encarnacion, 2002. "The discounted utility model and social preferences:: Some alternative formulations to conventional discounting," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 317-337, June.
    3. Robberstad, Bjarne, 2005. "Estimation of private and social time preferences for health in northern Tanzania," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(7), pages 1597-1607, October.
    4. Marjon Pol & Larissa Roux, 2005. "Time preference bias in time trade-off," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 6(2), pages 107-111, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alireza Mahboub-Ahari & Abolghasem Pourreza & Ali Akbari Sari & Trevor A Sheldon & Maryam Moeeni, 2019. "Private and social time preference for health outcomes: A general population survey in Iran," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(2), pages 1-13, February.
    2. S. Höjgård & U. Enemark & C. H. Lyttkens & A. Lindgren & T. Troëng & H. Weibull, 2002. "Discounting and clinical decision making: Physicians, patients, the general public, and the management of asymptomatic abdominal aortic aneurysms," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(4), pages 355-370, June.
    3. Lazaro, Angelina & Barberan, Ramon & Rubio, Encarnacion, 2002. "The discounted utility model and social preferences:: Some alternative formulations to conventional discounting," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 317-337, June.
    4. Arthur E. Attema & Han Bleichrodt & Olivier L’Haridon & Patrick Peretti-Watel & Valérie Seror, 2018. "Discounting health and money: New evidence using a more robust method," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 117-140, April.
    5. Robberstad, Bjarne, 2005. "Estimation of private and social time preferences for health in northern Tanzania," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(7), pages 1597-1607, October.
    6. Arthur E. Attema & Matthijs M. Versteegh, 2013. "Would You Rather Be Ill Now, Or Later?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(12), pages 1496-1506, December.
    7. Arthur E. Attema & Werner B. F. Brouwer & Karl Claxton, 2018. "Discounting in Economic Evaluations," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 36(7), pages 745-758, July.
    8. John A. Cairns & Marjon M. Van Der Pol, 1997. "Saving future lives. A comparison of three discounting models," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 6(4), pages 341-350, July.
    9. John Cairns & Marjon Van Der Pol, 1999. "Do People Value Their Own Future Health Differently from Others' Future Health?," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 19(4), pages 466-472, October.
    10. van der Pol, Marjon & Walsh, David & McCartney, Gerry, 2015. "Comparing time and risk preferences across three post-industrial UK cities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 54-61.
    11. K. Stavem & I. S. Kristiansen & J. A. Olsen, 2002. "Association of time preference for health with age and disease severity," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 3(2), pages 120-124, June.
    12. Han Bleichrodt & Yu Gao & Kirsten I. M. Rohde, 2016. "A measurement of decreasing impatience for health and money," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 213-231, June.
    13. Francis Asenso‐Boadi & Tim J. Peters & Joanna Coast, 2008. "Exploring differences in empirical time preference rates for health: an application of meta‐regression," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(2), pages 235-248, February.
    14. Cairns, John, 2006. "Developments in discounting: With special reference to future health events," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 282-297, August.
    15. Dodd, Mark C., 2014. "Intertemporal discounting as a risk factor for high BMI: Evidence from Australia, 2008," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 12(C), pages 83-97.
    16. Galizzi, Matteo M. & Miraldo, Marisa & Stavropoulou, Charitini & van der Pol, Marjon, 2016. "Doctor–patient differences in risk and time preferences: A field experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 171-182.
    17. Nancy Thiry & Philippe Beutels & Pierre Damme & Eddy Doorslaer, 2003. "Economic Evaluations of Varicella Vaccination Programmes," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 13-38, January.
    18. De Marchi, Elisa & Caputo, Vincenzina & Nayga, Rodolfo M. & Banterle, Alessandro, 2016. "Time preferences and food choices: Evidence from a choice experiment," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 99-109.
    19. Brouwer, Werner B. F. & van Exel, N. Job A., 2004. "Discounting in decision making: the consistency argument revisited empirically," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 187-194, February.
    20. Vasquez-Lavín, Felipe & Ponce Oliva, Roberto D. & Hernández, José Ignacio & Gelcich, Stefan & Carrasco, Moisés & Quiroga, Miguel, 2019. "Exploring dual discount rates for ecosystem services: Evidence from a marine protected area network," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 63-80.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:34:y:2002:i:3:p:339-350. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.