Measuring the Appropriate Outcomes for Better Decision-Making: A Framework to Guide the Analysis of Health Policy

Many existing economic evaluations of health policy recognize multidimensional outcomes and the importance of equally distributing the benefits, but do not to incorporate all relevant outcomes into a single comprehensive metric for cost-benefit analysis. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) inclusive growth framework offers a novel approach for improved evaluation of policies which can address these concerns by aggregating societal outcomes in terms of income, life expectancy, unemployment rates and inequality into a single measure of living standards. We discuss the inclusive growth framework in the context of health policy and how it can be utilized by business leaders and policymakers to make superior policy decisions. Using an inclusive growth index of living standards developed by the OECD, we decompose growth in living standards (as defined by the OECD) due to increased life expectancy in Canada between 2000 and 2011 by cause of death and estimate the equivalent value of these reductions in mortality in terms of billions of dollars of income. We discuss factors underlying these reductions in mortality and suggest how they have been linked to policy. This exercise illustrates one way in which the inclusive growth framework can be used to evaluate the impacts of health policy.