Health, wealth and fairness

Marc Fleurbaey

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: How much health should we have and how should it be distributed? This paper studies how to define social objectives for the allocation of health and income in a setting where individuals may differ in their preferences about health and consumption, earning ability and health disposition. It is shown, on the basis of three simple ethical principles, that a reasonable social objective is to apply the maximin criterion to "full-health equivalent" incomes. An application to the choice of the optimal health policy illustrates how this social objective may be used.

Keywords: social choice; fairness; health policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (44)

Published in Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2005, 7, pp.253-284

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Health, Wealth, and Fairness (2005)
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:hal:journl:hal-00247025

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().