The utility of health and wealth

The utility of health and wealth

Tradeoffs between health and wealth are among the most important decisions individuals make, and are central to social and economic policy. Yet, only a few studies have investigated the utility of health and wealth empirically. This paper investigates this utility function both theoretically and emp...

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Veröffentlicht in:Journal of health economics 2012-03, Vol.31 (2), p.379-392
Hauptverfasser: Levy, Moshe, Nir, Adi Rizansky
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
Algorithms
Cancer
Decision making
Diabetes
Diabetes Mellitus
Diabetics
Economic policy
Health
Health administration
Health economics
Humans
Logarithmic preference
Neoplasms
Patients
Qualitative Research
Socioeconomic Factors
Studies
Surveys and Questionnaires
Trade-off
Utility
Utility functions
Wealth
Wealth distribution
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Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Tradeoffs between health and wealth are among the most important decisions individuals make, and are central to social and economic policy. Yet, only a few studies have investigated the utility of health and wealth empirically. This paper investigates this utility function both theoretically and empirically. We conduct detailed personal interviews with 180 cancer patients, and also obtain questionnaires from 132 diabetes patients. We find strong support for the utility function U(h, w)=h·log(w), where h denotes health and w denotes wealth.
ISSN:0167-6296
1879-1646
DOI:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.02.003