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Are people consistent when trading time for health?

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  • Oliver, Adam
  • Wolff, Jonathan

Abstract

The conventional, or standard, time trade-off (TTO) procedure, which is used to elicit the values that people place on health states that are in turn required to calculate quality adjusted life-years (QALYs), asks respondents to trade off fewer life years for better health. It is possible to reverse the procedure to ask respondents to trade off less health for more life years. Theoretically, these two procedures should generate the same TTO values for any given health state. This article reports that for health states defined by differing frequencies of migraine attack, the standard TTO gives health state values that are significantly higher than those given by the reverse TTO. The observed systematic procedural invariance, which substantiates some previous findings reported in the literature and is consistent with a loss aversion effect, challenges the validity of the TTO for generating reliable valuations of health states.

Suggested Citation

  • Oliver, Adam & Wolff, Jonathan, 2014. "Are people consistent when trading time for health?," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 41-46.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:15:y:2014:i:c:p:41-46
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2014.05.001
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1991. "Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1039-1061.
    2. Arthur Attema & Werner Brouwer, 2012. "The way that you do it? An elaborate test of procedural invariance of TTO, using a choice-based design," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 13(4), pages 491-500, August.
    3. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1325-1348, December.
    4. John M. Miyamoto & Stephen A. Eraker, 1985. "Parameter Estimates for a QALY Utility Model," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 5(2), pages 191-213, June.
    5. Arthur E. Attema & Werner B. F. Brouwer, 2008. "Can we fix it? Yes we can! But what? A new test of procedural invariance in TTO‐measurement," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(7), pages 877-885, July.
    6. Bleichrodt, Han & Pinto, Jose Luis & Maria Abellan-Perpinan, Jose, 2003. "A consistency test of the time trade-off," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 1037-1052, November.
    7. Dolan, Paul & Jones-Lee, Michael, 1997. "The time trade-off: A note on the effect of lifetime reallocation of consumption and discounting," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 731-739, December.
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    9. Han Bleichrodt, 2002. "A new explanation for the difference between time trade‐off utilities and standard gamble utilities," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(5), pages 447-456, July.
    10. Anne Spencer, 2003. "The TTO method and procedural invariance," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(8), pages 655-668, August.
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    Cited by:

    1. Adam Oliver, 2018. "Your money and your life: Risk attitudes over gains and losses," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 29-50, August.
    2. Kang, Myong-Il & Ikeda, Shinsuke, 2016. "Time discounting, present biases, and health-related behaviors: Evidence from Japan," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 122-136.
    3. Oliver, Adam, 2018. "Your money and your life: risk attitudes over gains and losses," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 88583, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

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