Attitudes Towards Public Health Spending: The Case of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom

Peter Dolton, Mehmet Kutluay and Richard Tol

Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School

Abstract: The funding of the NHS in the UK is in perennial crisis. In times of austerity it is difficult to advocate extra health spending from tax revenue. Our central questions are: how much extra do people think should be spent on the NHS; how much extra tax might they be willing to pay; or to what extent would they like to see public money redistributed away from other public services towards the NHS? We answer these questions using a large survey of the UK general public. On average the answers to these questions are $279, $176 and $33 per person, per year, respectively. We examine people's appetite for other measures to increase spending on patients and find that their spending preferences are somewhat related to their own health but strongly related to their age, gender, religious beliefs, political sentiments, and views on the structure of the NHS.

Keywords: NHS spending; public provision of private good; other regarding preferences; time; risk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-ltv
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sus:susewp:0719

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