IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jrisku/v58y2019i2d10.1007_s11166-019-09301-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Utility functions for mild and severe health risks

Author

Listed:
  • W. Kip Viscusi

    (Vanderbilt Law School)

Abstract

This article reviews economic evidence on health-dependent utility functions and presents new estimates of utility functions for cancer. Estimates of health-dependent utility functions have found that mild adverse health impacts can be treated as monetary equivalents. Severe health consequences also reduce utility levels but have an additional effect of altering the structure of utility functions by reducing the marginal utility of income. The implications of past studies are often misleading when they fail to account for income losses and medical expenses associated with serious ailments. This article’s estimates of the structure of utility functions for cancer indicate a substantially lower marginal utility of income at any given income level. This result is consistent with the welfare consequences of other severe health effects, which impose harms that are not tantamount to a monetary loss.

Suggested Citation

  • W. Kip Viscusi, 2019. "Utility functions for mild and severe health risks," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 143-166, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:jrisku:v:58:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s11166-019-09301-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s11166-019-09301-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11166-019-09301-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11166-019-09301-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wojciech Kopczuk & Joseph P. Lupton, 2007. "To Leave or Not to Leave: The Distribution of Bequest Motives," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(1), pages 207-235.
    2. James Hammitt & Jin-Tan Liu, 2004. "Effects of Disease Type and Latency on the Value of Mortality Risk," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 73-95, January.
    3. Levy, Moshe & Nir, Adi Rizansky, 2012. "The utility of health and wealth," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 379-392.
    4. W. Kip Viscusi & Joel Huber & Jason Bell, 2014. "Assessing Whether There Is A Cancer Premium For The Value Of A Statistical Life," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4), pages 384-396, April.
    5. Evans, William N & Viscusi, W Kip, 1991. "Estimation of State-Dependent Utility Functions Using Survey Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 73(1), pages 94-104, February.
    6. Amy Finkelstein & Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2013. "What Good Is Wealth Without Health? The Effect Of Health On The Marginal Utility Of Consumption," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11, pages 221-258, January.
    7. Viscusi, W Kip & Evans, William N, 1990. "Utility Functions That Depend on Health Status: Estimates and Economic Implications," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 353-374, June.
    8. Rebecca L. McDonald & Susan M. Chilton & Michael W. Jones-Lee & Hugh R. T. Metcalf, 2016. "Dread and latency impacts on a VSL for cancer risk reductions," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 137-161, April.
    9. David Crainich & Louis Eeckhoudt, 2017. "Average willingness to pay for disease prevention with personalized health information," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 29-39, August.
    10. De Nardi, Mariacristina & Yang, Fang, 2014. "Bequests and heterogeneity in retirement wealth," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 182-196.
    11. Dorte Gyrd‐Hansen, 2017. "A Stated Preference Approach to Assess whether Health Status Impacts on Marginal Utility of Consumption," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(10), pages 1224-1233, October.
    12. W. Kip Viscusi & William N. Evans, 1998. "Estimation Of Revealed Probabilities And Utility Functions For Product Safety Decisions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(1), pages 28-33, February.
    13. Sven Tengstam, 2014. "Disability And Marginal Utility Of Income: Evidence From Hypothetical Choices," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(3), pages 268-282, March.
    14. Michael Spence, 1977. "Consumer Misperceptions, Product Failure and Producer Liability," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 44(3), pages 561-572.
    15. Viscusi, W Kip & O'Connor, Charles J, 1984. "Adaptive Responses to Chemical Labeling: Are Workers Bayesian Decision Makers?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(5), pages 942-956, December.
    16. James Hammitt & Kevin Haninger, 2010. "Valuing fatal risks to children and adults: Effects of disease, latency, and risk aversion," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 57-83, February.
    17. Lillard, Lee A & Weiss, Yoram, 1997. "Uncertain Health and Survival: Effects on End-of-Life Consumption," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(2), pages 254-268, April.
    18. John Ameriks & Joseph Briggs & Andrew Caplin & Matthew D. Shapiro & Christopher Tonetti, 2020. "Long-Term-Care Utility and Late-in-Life Saving," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(6), pages 2375-2451.
    19. George Houtven & Melonie Sullivan & Chris Dockins, 2008. "Cancer premiums and latency effects: A risk tradeoff approach for valuing reductions in fatal cancer risks," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 179-199, April.
    20. W. Viscusi & William Evans, 2006. "Behavioral Probabilities," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 5-15, January.
    21. Jeffrey R. Brown & Gopi Shah Goda & Kathleen McGarry, 2016. "Heterogeneity In State-Dependent Utility: Evidence From Strategic Surveys," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(2), pages 847-861, April.
    22. Sloan, Frank A. & Kip Viscusi, W. & Chesson, Harrell W. & Conover, Christopher J. & Whetten-Goldstein, Kathryn, 1998. "Alternative approaches to valuing intangible health losses: the evidence for multiple sclerosis1," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 475-497, August.
    23. Wesley A. Magat & W. Kip Viscusi & Joel Huber, 1996. "A Reference Lottery Metric for Valuing Health," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(8), pages 1118-1130, August.
    24. Moore, Michael J & Viscusi, W Kip, 1990. "Models for Estimating Discount Rates for Long-term Health Risks Using Labor Market Data," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 3(4), pages 381-401, December.
    25. William N. Evans & W. Kip Viscusi, 1993. "Income Effects and the Value of Health," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 28(3), pages 497-518.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Herrera-Araujo, Daniel & Rheinberger, Christoph M. & Hammitt, James K., 2022. "Valuing non-marginal changes in mortality and morbidity risk," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    2. Felder, Stefan, 2020. "The treatment decision under uncertainty: The effects of health, wealth and the probability of death," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    3. Schünemann, Johannes & Strulik, Holger & Trimborn, Timo, 2023. "Anticipation of deteriorating health and information avoidance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    4. Johannes G. Jaspersen, 2022. "When full insurance may not be optimal: The case of restricted substitution," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(6), pages 1249-1257, June.
    5. Jiakun Zheng, 2021. "Willingness to pay for reductions in health risks under anticipated regret," Post-Print hal-04227414, HAL.
    6. Bonekamp, Johan & Wouterse, Bram, 2023. "Do different shocks in health matter for wealth?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    7. Yves Arrighi & David Crainich & Véronique Flambard & Sophie Massin, 2022. "Personalized information and willingness to pay for non-financial risk prevention: An experiment," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 65(1), pages 57-82, August.
    8. Yoshiro Tsutsui & Iku Tsutsui-Kimura, 2022. "How does risk preference change under the stress of COVID-19? Evidence from Japan," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 64(2), pages 191-212, April.
    9. Byl, Jacob P. & Viscusi, W. Kip, 2021. "Experimental study of consumer responses to different sources of information about prescription drugs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 754-771.
    10. Herrera-Araujo, Daniel & Hammitt, James K. & Rheinberger, Christoph M., 2020. "Theoretical bounds on the value of improved health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    11. Bonekamp, Johan, 2021. "Studies on labour supply, spending and saving before and after retirement," Other publications TiSEM 0d839f2c-ea6c-4f08-8164-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    12. Thomas J. Kniesner & Ryan Sullivan, 2020. "The forgotten numbers: A closer look at COVID-19 non-fatal valuations," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 155-176, October.
    13. Patrick Carlin & Brian E. Dixon & Kosali I. Simon & Ryan Sullivan & Coady Wing, 2022. "How Undervalued is the Covid-19 Vaccine? Evidence from Discrete Choice Experiments and VSL Benchmarks," NBER Working Papers 30118, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Kanninen, Ohto & Böckerman, Petri & Suoniemi, Ilpo, 2022. "Income–well-being gradient in sickness and health," MPRA Paper 113269, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Zheng, Jiakun, 2021. "Willingness to pay for reductions in health risks under anticipated regret," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    16. Fink Simonsen, Nicolai & Kjær, Trine, 2021. "New Evidence of Health State Dependent Utility of Consumption: A combined survey and register study," DaCHE discussion papers 2021:2, University of Southern Denmark, Dache - Danish Centre for Health Economics.
    17. W. Kip Viscusi, 2019. "Risk guideposts for a safer society: Introduction and overview," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 101-119, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kools, Lieke & Knoef, Marike, 2019. "Health and consumption preferences; estimating the health state dependence of utility using equivalence scales," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 46-62.
    2. Dorte Gyrd‐Hansen, 2017. "A Stated Preference Approach to Assess whether Health Status Impacts on Marginal Utility of Consumption," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(10), pages 1224-1233, October.
    3. Hammitt, James K. & Herrera-Araujo, Daniel & Rheinberger, Christoph, 2016. "The Value of Cancer Prevention vs Treatment," TSE Working Papers 16-628, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    4. Daniel Bauer & Darius Lakdawalla & Julian Reif, 2018. "Mortality Risk, Insurance, and the Value of Life," NBER Working Papers 25055, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Attema, Arthur E. & l’Haridon, Olivier & van de Kuilen, Gijs, 2019. "Measuring multivariate risk preferences in the health domain," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 15-24.
    6. Arthur E. Attema & Marieke Krol & Job Exel & Werner B. F. Brouwer, 2018. "New findings from the time trade-off for income approach to elicit willingness to pay for a quality adjusted life year," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(2), pages 277-291, March.
    7. Rheinberger, Christoph M. & Herrera-Araujo, Daniel & Hammitt, James K., 2016. "The value of disease prevention vs treatment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 247-255.
    8. Moshe Levy & Adi Rizansky, 2014. "Market failure in the pharmaceutical industry and how it can be overcome: the CureShare mechanism," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 15(2), pages 143-156, March.
    9. Sara Olofsson & Ulf G. Gerdtham & Lars Hultkrantz & Ulf Persson, 2019. "Dread and Risk Elimination Premium for the Value of a Statistical Life," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(11), pages 2391-2407, November.
    10. Rachel Kreier & Bhaswati Sengupta, 2015. "Income, Health, and the Value of Preserving Options," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 43(4), pages 431-448, December.
    11. Padmaja Ayyagari & Daifeng He, 2017. "The Role of Medical Expenditure Risk in Portfolio Allocation Decisions," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(11), pages 1447-1458, November.
    12. Fadlon, Itzik & Nielsen, Torben Heien, 2019. "Household labor supply and the gains from social insurance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 18-28.
    13. Alberini, Anna & Ščasný, Milan, 2018. "The benefits of avoiding cancer (or dying from cancer): Evidence from a four- country study," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 249-262.
    14. Octave Jokung & Serge Macé, 2013. "Long-term health investment when people underestimate their adaptation to old age-related health problems," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 14(6), pages 1003-1013, December.
    15. Jimin Hong & Kyungsun Kim, 2021. "Self-insurance and saving under a two-argument utility framework," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 134(1), pages 73-94, September.
    16. Amy Finkelstein & Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2009. "Approaches to Estimating the Health State Dependence of the Utility Function," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 116-121, May.
    17. Xiaoyu Wang & Chunan Wang, 2020. "How Does Health Status Affect Marginal Utility of Consumption? Evidence from China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(7), pages 1-20, March.
    18. Hammitt, James K. & Herrera-Araujo, Daniel, 2018. "Peeling back the onion: Using latent class analysis to uncover heterogeneous responses to stated preference surveys," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 165-189.
    19. Anna Alberini, 2017. "Measuring the economic value of the effects of chemicals on ecological systems and human health," OECD Environment Working Papers 116, OECD Publishing.
    20. McDonald, R.L. & Chilton, S.M. & Jones-Lee, M.W. & Metcalf, H.R.T., 2017. "Evidence of variable discount rates and non-standard discounting in mortality risk valuation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 152-167.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jrisku:v:58:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s11166-019-09301-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.