Estimating Public Preferences on Population Health Ethics

Rory Allanson, Matthew Robson

Research output: Working paperDiscussion paper

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Abstract

We develop a social choice experiment to estimate public preferences on population ethics. Our experiment poses three within-subject treatments in which participants allocate scarce resources to determine the health-related quality-of-life, and existence, of two population groups. Within a flexible social welfare function, we estimate participant-level preferences for inequality aversion, average vs total welfare maximisation, and minimum ‘critical level’ thresholds. By combining random behavioural and random utility models we also explicitly model ‘noise’ in decision making. Using a sample of UK adults (n=115, obs.=5,060), we find that 98.7% of respondents are inequality averse, prioritising the worst-off at the expense of efficiently maximising overall health. The modal group of participants (39.2%) maximise total welfare and have a critical level threshold of zero, however there is extensive heterogeneity in participants’ population preferences. We then demonstrate how these preferences can aid policymaking, where difficult trade-offs emerge between equity and efficiency, average and total welfare, and population size.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationGlasgow
PublisherUniversity of Strathclyde
Number of pages51
Publication statusPublished - 28 Oct 2024

Publication series

NameStrathclyde Discussion Papers in Economics
PublisherUniversity of Strathclyde
Volume24-02

Keywords

  • experiment
  • health
  • social welfare
  • inequality
  • population ethics

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