The Economics of Risky Health Behaviors

John Cawley and Christopher Ruhm

No 17081, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky health behaviors. It describes traditional economic approaches emphasizing utility maximization that, under certain assumptions, result in Pareto-optimal outcomes and a limited role for policy interventions. It also details nontraditional models (e.g. involving hyperbolic time discounting or bounded rationality) that even without market imperfections can result in suboptimal outcomes for which government intervention has greater potential to increase social welfare. The chapter summarizes the literature on the consequences of risky health behaviors for economic outcomes such as medical care costs, educational attainment, employment, wages, and crime. It also reviews the research on policies and strategies with the potential to modify risky health behaviors, such as taxes or subsidies, cash incentives, restrictions on purchase and use, providing information and restricting advertising. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.

JEL-codes: D01 D03 D1 D6 D83 D87 H2 I1 I18 I20 J1 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: CH ED EH LE LS PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (231)

Published as John Cawley, Christopher J. Ruhm. “Chapter Three - The Economics of Risky Health Behaviors” Handbook of Health Economics, Volume 2, 2011, Pages 95-199

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17081.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: The Economics of Risky Health Behaviors (2011)
Working Paper: The Economics of Risky Health Behaviors (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17081

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17081

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().