Eliciting the level of health inequality aversion in England

Matthew Robson (), Miqdad Asaria, Richard Cookson, Aki Tsuchiya () and Shehzad Ali
Additional contact information
Richard Cookson: Centre for Health Economics, University of York, UK.
Shehzad Ali: Centre for Health Economics and Department of Health Sciences, University of York, UK.

No 125cherp, Working Papers from Centre for Health Economics, University of York

Abstract: Policy makers faced with equality-efficiency trade-offs can articulate the nature and extent of their health inequality aversion using social welfare functions. In this study we use data from an online survey of the general public in England (n=246) to elicit health inequality aversion parameters by numerically solving Atkinson and Kolm social welfare functions. We elicit median inequality aversion parameters of 10.95 for Atkinson and 0.15 for Kolm. These values suggest substantial concern for health inequality among the English general public which, at current levels of quality adjusted life expectancy, implies weighting health gains to the poorest fifth of people in society six to seven times as highly as health gains to the richest fifth.

Keywords: health inequality; inequality aversion; social preferences; survey; welfare function (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2016-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp, nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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http://www.york.ac.uk/media/che/documents/papers/r ... ity_preferences_.pdf First version, 2016 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Eliciting the Level of Health Inequality Aversion in England (2017)
Working Paper: Eliciting the level of health inequality aversion in England (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chy:respap:125cherp

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