Incorporating Inequality Aversion in Health-Care Priority Setting

Joan Costa-i-Font and Frank Cowell ()
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Joan Costa-i-Font

No 7503, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Although measures of sensitivity to inequality are important in judging the welfare effects of health-care programmes, it is far from straightforward how to elicit them and apply them in health-care decision making. This paper provides an overview of the literature on the measurement of inequality aversion, examines some of the features specific of the health domain that depart from the income domain, and discusses its implementation in health system priority-setting decisions. We find evidence that individuals exhibit a preference for more equitable health distribution, but inequality aversion estimates from the literature are unclear. Unlike the income-inequality literature, standard approaches in the health-economics do not follow a ‘veil-of-ignorance’ approach and elicit mostly bivariate (income-related health) inequality aversion estimates. We suggest some ideas to reduce the disconnect between the income-inequality and health-economics literatures.

Keywords: attitudes to inequality; inequality aversion; health; income; survey data; priority setting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Incorporating inequality aversion in health-care priority setting (2019)
Working Paper: Incorporating Inequality Aversion in Health-Care Priority Setting (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7503

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