Health-related quality of life and compensating income variation for 18 health conditions in Iceland

Tinna Laufey Ásgeirsdóttir, Kristín Helga Birgisdóttir, Hanna Björg Henrysdóttir and Thorhildur Ólafsdóttir

Applied Economics, 2020, vol. 52, issue 15, 1656-1670

Abstract: Using data from an Icelandic health and well-being survey, carried out in 2007, 2009, and 2012, we estimate the value of health-related suffering in two different ways. Our primary aim is to obtain the monetary compensation needed to maintain the same level of well-being with and without 18 health conditions using the compensating-income-variation approach. This method employs individual well-being measures with no hypothetical situations involved, thus offering a solution to biases of frequently used methods to value non-marketed goods. We also use zero-one normalization of regression coefficients to estimate health-related quality-of-life weights. Results from monetary valuations indicate that 1,685,594 USD are needed per year to compensate for the presence of melancholy, 206,273 USD for frequent headaches, 153,396 USD for severely low vision, and 80,824 USD for severe monthly menstrual cramps. This research adds to the literature by employing two rarely used methods to a range of health conditions. By valuing several different conditions with the same sample and methodology this research provides a ranking between the conditions, aiding policy makers in prioritizing scarce resources. We do however advise against using the normalization method for policy purposes at this point, due to the deviation of results from the general literature.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2019.1677849 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:applec:v:52:y:2020:i:15:p:1656-1670

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2019.1677849

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().