IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pab/wpaper/16.01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A normative foundation for equity-sensitive health evaluation: the role of relative comparisons of health gains

Author

Listed:
  • Juan D. Moreno-Ternero

    (U. Pablo de Olavide y CORE, Université catholique de Louvain)

  • Lars P. Osterdal

    (University of Southern Denmark)

Abstract

We explore in this paper the relationship between equity-sensitive population health evaluation measures and normative concerns for relative comparisons of health gains. Such a relationship allows us to characterize focal equity-sensitive models for the evaluation of population health. Instances are the so-called multiplicative Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) and multiplicative Healthy Years Equivalent (HYEs), as well as generalizations of the two. Our axiomatic approach assumes social preferences over distributions of individual health states experienced in a given period of time. It conveys informational simplicity, as it does not require information about individual preferences on health.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan D. Moreno-Ternero & Lars P. Osterdal, 2016. "A normative foundation for equity-sensitive health evaluation: the role of relative comparisons of health gains," Working Papers 16.01, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:pab:wpaper:16.01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.upo.es/serv/bib/wps/econ1601.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amiel,Yoram & Cowell,Frank, 1999. "Thinking about Inequality," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521466967, October.
    2. Drummond, Michael F. & Sculpher, Mark J. & Torrance, George W. & O'Brien, Bernie J. & Stoddart, Greg L., 2005. "Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780198529453.
    3. Abram Burk, 1936. "Real Income, Expenditure Proportionality, and Frisch's "New Methods of Measuring Marginal Utility"," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 4(1), pages 33-52.
    4. David Canning, 2013. "Axiomatic Foundations For Cost‐Effectiveness Analysis," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(12), pages 1405-1416, December.
    5. Anand, Paul, 2003. "The integration of claims to health-care: a programming approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 731-745, September.
    6. Osterdal, Lars Peter, 2005. "Axioms for health care resource allocation," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 679-702, July.
    7. Walter Bossert & Conchita D'Ambrosio, 2013. "Measuring Economic Insecurity," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 54(3), pages 1017-1030, August.
    8. Walter Bossert & Conchita D'Ambrosio, 2013. "Measuring Economic Insecurity," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 54, pages 1017-1030, August.
    9. Wagstaff, Adam, 1991. "QALYs and the equity-efficiency trade-off," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 21-41, May.
    10. Nash, John, 1950. "The Bargaining Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 18(2), pages 155-162, April.
    11. Pedro Rosa Dias, 2009. "Inequality of opportunity in health: evidence from a UK cohort study," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(9), pages 1057-1074, September.
    12. Hougaard, Jens Leth & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2013. "A new axiomatic approach to the evaluation of population health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 515-523.
    13. Hammond, Peter J, 1976. "Equity, Arrow's Conditions, and Rawls' Difference Principle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(4), pages 793-804, July.
    14. Alan Williams, 1997. "Intergenerational Equity: An Exploration of the ‘Fair Innings’ Argument," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 6(2), pages 117-132, March.
    15. Eduardo Zambrano, 2014. "An axiomatization of the human development index," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(4), pages 853-872, April.
    16. Lars Peter Østerdal, 2003. "A note on cost‐value analysis," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(3), pages 247-250, March.
    17. FLEURBAEY, Marc & SCHOKKAERT, Erik, 2011. "Equity in health and health care," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2011026, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    18. Dolan, Paul, 1998. "The measurement of individual utility and social welfare," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 39-52, January.
    19. Bleichrodt, Han & Wakker, Peter & Johannesson, Magnus, 1997. "Characterizing QALYs by Risk Neutrality," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 107-114, November.
    20. Dolan, Paul & Robinson, Angela, 2001. "The measurement of preferences over the distribution of benefits: The importance of the reference point," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(9), pages 1697-1709, October.
    21. Bleichrodt, Han, 1997. "Health utility indices and equity considerations," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 65-91, February.
    22. George W. Torrance, 1976. "Health Status Index Models: A Unified Mathematical View," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(9), pages 990-1001, May.
    23. Paul Dolan & Daniel Kahneman, 2008. "Interpretations Of Utility And Their Implications For The Valuation Of Health," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(525), pages 215-234, January.
    24. Joseph S. Pliskin & Donald S. Shepard & Milton C. Weinstein, 1980. "Utility Functions for Life Years and Health Status," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(1), pages 206-224, February.
    25. Pedro Rosa Dias, 2010. "Modelling opportunity in health under partial observability of circumstances," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(3), pages 252-264, March.
    26. Jens Leth Hougaard & Juan D. Moreno-Ternero & Lars Peter Østerdal, 2013. "On the Measurement of the (Multidimensional) Inequality of Health Distributions," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Health and Inequality, volume 21, pages 111-129, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    27. John M. Miyamoto & Peter P. Wakker & Han Bleichrodt & Hans J. M. Peters, 1998. "The Zero-Condition: A Simplifying Assumption in QALY Measurement and Multiattribute Utility," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(6), pages 839-849, June.
    28. Charles M. Harvey & Lars Peter Østerdal, 2010. "Cardinal Scales for Health Evaluation," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 7(3), pages 256-281, September.
    29. Moreno-Terneroy , Juan D & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2015. "The implications of equal value of life and prioritarianism for the evaluation of population health," DaCHE discussion papers 2015:1, University of Southern Denmark, Dache - Danish Centre for Health Economics.
    30. Adam Turpcu & Han Bleichrodt & Quang A. Le & Jason N. Doctor, 2012. "How to Aggregate Health? Separability and the Effect of Framing," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 32(2), pages 259-265, March.
    31. Abraham Mehrez & Amiram Gafni, 1989. "Quality-adjusted Life Years, Utility Theory, and Healthy-years Equivalents," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 9(2), pages 142-149, June.
    32. John A. Weymark & Kai-yuen Tsui, 1997. "Social welfare orderings for ratio-scale measurable utilities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 10(2), pages 241-256.
    33. Torrance, George W., 1986. "Measurement of health state utilities for economic appraisal : A review," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 1-30, March.
    34. Williams, Alan & Cookson, Richard, 2000. "Equity in health," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 35, pages 1863-1910, Elsevier.
    35. William Thomson, 2001. "On the axiomatic method and its recent applications to game theory and resource allocation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 18(2), pages 327-386.
    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. Hansen, Kristian S. & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Østerdal, Lars P., 2023. "Productivity and quality-adjusted life years: QALYs, PALYs and beyond," Working Papers 11-2023, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics.
    2. Ricardo Martínez & Juan D Moreno Ternero, 2021. "Pandemic performance," ThE Papers 21/09, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    3. Ricardo Martínez & Juan D. Moreno‐Ternero, 2024. "Redistribution with needs," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 26(1), February.
    4. Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Platz, Trine Tornøe & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2023. "QALYs, DALYs, and HALYs: A unifying framework for the evaluation of population health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    5. Juan D. Moreno-Ternero & Lars Peter Østerdal, 2023. "Entitlements to continued life and the evaluation of population health," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 27(3), pages 561-579, September.
    6. Moreno-Terneroy , Juan D & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2015. "The implications of equal value of life and prioritarianism for the evaluation of population health," DaCHE discussion papers 2015:1, University of Southern Denmark, Dache - Danish Centre for Health Economics.
    7. Martínez, Ricardo & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D., 2022. "An axiomatic approach towards pandemic performance indicators," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    8. Hansen, Kristian S. & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Østerdal, Lars P., 2024. "Quality- and productivity-adjusted life years: From QALYs to PALYs and beyond," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    9. Iluminada Fuertes-Fuertes & J. David Cabedo & Inmaculada Jimeno-García, 2019. "Capturing the Invisible Wealth in Nonprofits to Overcome Myopic Perceptions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-18, December.

    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. Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2014. "Normative foundations for equity-sensitive population health evaluation functions," DaCHE discussion papers 2014:1, University of Southern Denmark, Dache - Danish Centre for Health Economics.
    2. Hougaard, Jens Leth & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2013. "A new axiomatic approach to the evaluation of population health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 515-523.
    3. Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Platz, Trine Tornøe & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2023. "QALYs, DALYs, and HALYs: A unifying framework for the evaluation of population health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    4. Moreno-Terneroy , Juan D & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2015. "The implications of equal value of life and prioritarianism for the evaluation of population health," DaCHE discussion papers 2015:1, University of Southern Denmark, Dache - Danish Centre for Health Economics.
    5. Hansen, Kristian S. & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Østerdal, Lars P., 2024. "Quality- and productivity-adjusted life years: From QALYs to PALYs and beyond," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    6. Juan D. Moreno-Ternero & Lars Peter Østerdal, 2023. "Entitlements to continued life and the evaluation of population health," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 27(3), pages 561-579, September.
    7. Hansen, Kristian S. & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Østerdal, Lars P., 2023. "Productivity and quality-adjusted life years: QALYs, PALYs and beyond," Working Papers 11-2023, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics.
    8. Osterdal, Lars Peter, 2005. "Axioms for health care resource allocation," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 679-702, July.
    9. Charles M. Harvey & Lars Peter Østerdal, 2010. "Cardinal Scales for Health Evaluation," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 7(3), pages 256-281, September.
    10. Jens Leth Hougaard & Juan D. Moreno-Ternero & Lars Peter Østerdal, 2013. "On the Measurement of the (Multidimensional) Inequality of Health Distributions," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Health and Inequality, volume 21, pages 111-129, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    11. Martínez, Ricardo & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D., 2022. "An axiomatic approach towards pandemic performance indicators," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    12. Ricardo Martínez & Juan D Moreno Ternero, 2021. "Pandemic performance," ThE Papers 21/09, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    13. Lars Østerdal, 2009. "The lack of theoretical support for using person trade-offs in QALY-type models," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 10(4), pages 429-436, October.
    14. Morton, Alec, 2014. "Aversion to health inequalities in healthcare prioritisation: A multicriteria optimisation perspective," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 164-173.
    15. Hoel, Michael, 2007. "What should (public) health insurance cover?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 251-262, March.
    16. Johannesson, Magnus, 1999. "On aggregating QALYs: a comment on Dolan," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 381-386, June.
    17. Mæstad, Ottar & Norheim, Ole Frithjof, 2012. "A universal preference for equality in health? Reasons to reconsider properties of applied social welfare functions," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(10), pages 1836-1843.
    18. Anand, Paul, 2003. "The integration of claims to health-care: a programming approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 731-745, September.
    19. Attema, Arthur E. & Brouwer, Werner B.F. & l’Haridon, Olivier & Pinto, Jose Luis, 2015. "Estimating sign-dependent societal preferences for quality of life," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 229-243.
    20. Michael Hoel, 2003. "Allocating health care resources when people are risk averse with respect to life time," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(7), pages 601-608, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Population health; equity; HYEs; QALYs; relative comparisons; axioms.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pab:wpaper:16.01. 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: Publicación Digital - UPO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deupoes.html .

    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.