IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eep/tpaper/sp199901t2.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Individuals' Rates of Time Preference for Life-Saving Programs in Developing Countries: Results from a Multi-Country Study

Author

Listed:
  • Christine Poulos

    (Departments of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Public Policy, and City & Regional Planning, University of North Carolina)

  • Dale Whittington

    (Departments of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, Public Policy, and City & Regional Planning, University of North Carolina)

Abstract

Individuals' time preferences for mortality reductions are measured in six Less Developed Countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia using the contingent valuation method. The results indicate that individuals' discount factors are much lower than those estimated for a United States sample. Also, respondents' intertemporal preferences for saving lives are characterized by a nonexponential discount function. We conclude that the discounting practices currently used in standard economic analyses of development projects are probably poor representations of individuals' actual intertemporal preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Christine Poulos & Dale Whittington, 1999. "Individuals' Rates of Time Preference for Life-Saving Programs in Developing Countries: Results from a Multi-Country Study," EEPSEA Special and Technical Paper sp199901t2, Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA), revised Jan 1999.
    • Handle: RePEc:eep:tpaper:sp199901t2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.idrc.ca/uploads/user-S/10536140450ACF34D.pdf
    File Function: First version, 1999
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cropper, Maureen L & Aydede, Sema K & Portney, Paul R, 1994. "Preferences for Life Saving Programs: How the Public Discounts Time and Age," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 243-265, May.
    2. George Loewenstein & Drazen Prelec, 1992. "Anomalies in Intertemporal Choice: Evidence and an Interpretation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 573-597.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Arthur E. Attema & Han Bleichrodt & Olivier L’Haridon & Patrick Peretti-Watel & Valérie Seror, 2018. "Discounting health and money: New evidence using a more robust method," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 117-140, April.
    2. Isabel Mendes & Isabel Proença, 2005. "Estimating the Recreation Value of Ecosystems by Using a Travel Cost Method Approach," Working Papers Department of Economics 2005/08, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    3. Cropper, Maureen & Laibson, David, 1998. "The implications of hyperbolic discounting for project evaluation," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1943, The World Bank.
    4. Lazaro, Angelina & Barberan, Ramon & Rubio, Encarnacion, 2002. "The discounted utility model and social preferences:: Some alternative formulations to conventional discounting," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 317-337, June.
    5. Weitzman, Martin L., 1998. "Why the Far-Distant Future Should Be Discounted at Its Lowest Possible Rate," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 201-208, November.
    6. C. Robert Kenley & Donald C. Armstead, 2004. "Discounting models for long‐term decision making," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(1), pages 13-24.
    7. Alireza Mahboub-Ahari & Abolghasem Pourreza & Ali Akbari Sari & Trevor A Sheldon & Maryam Moeeni, 2019. "Private and social time preference for health outcomes: A general population survey in Iran," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(2), pages 1-13, February.
    8. Jean Charles Hourcade & Franck Lecocq, 2003. "Le taux d'actualisation contre le principe de précaution ? Leçons à partir du cas des politiques climatiques," Working Papers halshs-00000967, HAL.
    9. Settle, Chad & Shogren, Jason F., 2004. "Hyperbolic discounting and time inconsistency in a native-exotic species conflict," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 255-274, June.
    10. Guyse, Jeffery L. & Keller, L. Robin & Eppel, Thomas, 2002. "Valuing Environmental Outcomes: Preferences for Constant or Improving Sequences," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 253-277, March.
    11. van der Pol, Marjon & Cairns, John, 2002. "A comparison of the discounted utility model and hyperbolic discounting models in the case of social and private intertemporal preferences for health," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 79-96, September.
    12. W. Kip Viscusi & Joel Huber, 2006. "Hyperbolic Discounting of Public Goods," NBER Working Papers 11935, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Jamison Dean T. & Jamison Julian, 2011. "Characterizing the Amount and Speed of Discounting Procedures," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, De Gruyter, vol. 2(2), pages 1-56, April.
    14. Therese Grijalva & Jayson Lusk & W. Shaw, 2014. "Discounting the Distant Future: An Experimental Investigation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 59(1), pages 39-63, September.
    15. Monika Foltyn-Zarychta, 2021. "Future-Generation Perception: Equal or Not Equal? Long-Term Individual Discount Rates for Poland," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-19, December.
    16. Marjon van der Pol & John Cairns, 2011. "Descriptive validity of alternative intertemporal models for health outcomes: an axiomatic test," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(7), pages 770-782, July.
    17. Han Bleichrodt & Yu Gao & Kirsten I. M. Rohde, 2016. "A measurement of decreasing impatience for health and money," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 213-231, June.
    18. Dean T. Jamison & Julian Jamison, 2010. "Characterizing the amount and speed of discounting procedures," Working Papers 10-14, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    19. Tomak, Kerem & Keskin, Tayfun, 2008. "Exploring the trade-off between immediate gratification and delayed network externalities in the consumption of information goods," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 187(3), pages 887-902, June.
    20. Lillemo, Shuling Chen, 2014. "Measuring the effect of procrastination and environmental awareness on households' energy-saving behaviours: An empirical approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 249-256.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Time preference;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:eep:tpaper:sp199901t2. 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: Arief Anshory yusuf (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eepsesg.html .

    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.