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

While many existing economic evaluations of health policy recognize multidimensional outcomes and the importance of equality, most fail 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 with multidimensional consequences. We discuss the inclusive growth framework 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 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 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.