Responsibility-Sensitive Welfare Weights for Health

Matthew Robson (), Owen O’Donnell and Tom Van Ourti
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Owen O’Donnell: Erasmus University Rotterdam

No 24-045/V, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: We estimate responsibility-sensitive welfare weights for health that facilitate inequality- and inequity-sensitive policy evaluation. In a UK general population sample, 569 on- line experiment participants distribute constrained resources to determine the health of hypothetical individuals distinguished by randomly generated resource productivity as well as sex, income and smoking (41,460 observations). We elicit beliefs about responsibility for income and smoking, and use their associations with the allocations to estimate responsibility-sensitive weights that reflect inequality aversion and health prioritisation by the non-health characteristics. There is slight, moderate and substantial prioritisation of females, the poor and non-smokers, respectively. Inequality aversion lowers weights on females and non-smokers, who are health-advantaged, and raises the weight on the poor, who are health-disadvantaged. As beliefs about responsibility for income and smoking strengthen, weights on the poor decrease and weights on non-smokers significantly increase.

Keywords: Experiment; Social Preferences; Inequality Aversion; Equity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D30 D63 I14 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-07-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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