IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/isu/genstf/201203010800001066.html

Life, death and world inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Cordoba, Juan Carlos
  • Ripoll, Marla

Abstract

Life expectancy around the world has increased substantially since 1970. In contrast, consumption per capita has fallen in some countries, remained stagnant, or sharply increased in others. What are the welfare gains of the systematic increase in life expectancy around the world? How does a "full measure" of per capita income, one that adjusts for life expectancy, compare to standard measures of world inequality that only consider income? This paper documents how standard models used to answer these questions give rise to a number of predictions that are inconsistent with well-documented evidence, particularly on the value of statistical life. It then proposes a generalized model with non-separable preferences that exhibits a low elasticity of intertemporal substitution and a low degree of mortality aversion. The non-separable model reverts the counterfactual predictions of the standard model, and it also provides plausible measures of changes in welfare and inequality around the world.

Suggested Citation

  • Cordoba, Juan Carlos & Ripoll, Marla, 2012. "Life, death and world inequality," ISU General Staff Papers 201203010800001066, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:isu:genstf:201203010800001066
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/03214bc5-90b5-4ef0-8543-344630c14d55/content
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Cordoba, Juan Carlos, 2012. "Children and the wealth of nations," ISU General Staff Papers 201210140700001080, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D - Microeconomics
    • J - Labor and Demographic Economics

    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:isu:genstf:201203010800001066. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Curtis Balmer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deiasus.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.