The Impact of Presumed Consent Legislation on Cadaveric Organ Donation: A Cross Country Study

Alberto Abadie and Sebastien Gay ()

Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government

Abstract: In the U.S., Great Britain, and in many other countries, the gap between the demand and the supply of human organs for transplantation is on the rise, despite the efforts of governments and health agencies to promote donor registration. In some countries of continental Europe, however, cadaveric organ procurement is based on the principle of presumed consent. Under presumed consent legislation, a deceased individual is classified as a potential donor in absence of explicit opposition to donation before death. This article analyzes the impact of presumed consent laws on donation rates. For this purpose, we construct a dataset on organ donation rates and potential factors affecting organ donation for 22 countries over a 10-year period. We find that while differences in other determinants of organ donation explain much of the variation in donation rates, after controlling for those determinants presumed consent legislation has a positive and sizeable effect on organ donation rates.

Date: 2004-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=125

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of presumed consent legislation on cadaveric organ donation: A cross-country study (2006)
Working Paper: The Impact of Presumed Consent Legislation on Cadaveric Organ Donation: A Cross Country Study (2004)
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:ecl:harjfk:rwp04-024

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().