Altruism, fertility, and the value of children: Health policy evaluation and intergenerational welfare

Javier Birchenall and Rodrigo Soares

Journal of Public Economics, 2009, vol. 93, issue 1-2, 280-295

Abstract: This paper accounts for the value of children and future generations in the evaluation of health policies. This is achieved through the incorporation of altruism and fertility in a "value of life" type of framework. We are able to express adults' willingness to pay for changes in child mortality and also to incorporate the welfare of future generations in the evaluation of current policies. Our model clarifies a series of puzzles from the literature on the "value of life" and on intergenerational welfare comparisons. We show that, by incorporating altruism and fertility into the analysis of the recent U.S. experience, the estimated welfare gain of a young adult from reductions in mortality easily doubles.

Keywords: Value; of; life; Mortality; Fertility; Altruism; Intergenerational; welfare; Willingness; to; pay (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047-2727(08)00115-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Altruism, Fertility, and the Value of Children: Health Policy Evaluation and Intergenerational Welfare (2007)
Working Paper: Altruism, Fertility, and the Value of Children: Health Policy Evaluation and Intergenerational Welfare (2007)
Working Paper: Altruism, Fertility, and the Value of Children: Health Policy Evaluation and Intergenerational Welfare* (2007)
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:eee:pubeco:v:93:y:2009:i:1-2:p:280-295

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().