Trading Off Consumption and COVID-19 Deaths

Robert E. Hall, Charles Jones and Pete Klenow

Quarterly Review, 2020, vol. 42, issue 1, 14

Abstract: This note develops a framework for thinking about the following question: What is the maximum amount of consumption that a utilitarian welfare function would be willing to trade off to avoid the deaths associated with COVID-19? The answer depends crucially on the mortality rate associated with the coronavirus. If the mortality rate averages 0.81%, as projected in one prominent study, our answer is 41% of one year's consumption. If the mortality rate instead averages 0.44% across age groups, as suggested by a recent seroprevalence study, our answer is 28%.

Keywords: COVID-19; coronavirus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (64)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr4211.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Trading Off Consumption and COVID-19 Deaths (2020)
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:fip:fedmqr:88339

DOI: 10.21034/qr.4211

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Quarterly Review from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kate Hansel ().