American Journal of Agricultural Economics · 1991 · 86 citations · 0 references
Social SciencesEconomicsHealth PolicyBehavioral EconomicsDecision TheoryLife InsuranceBehavioral Health EconomicsDiscount PricingDiscounting In Economic EvaluationLife ExpectancyOutcome ValuationUtility Elicitation MethodsDifferential DiscountingDiscounted Utility ModelDiscounting In Economic ModelsDiscounting In Regulatory AnalysisDiscounting Of Future BenefitsFuture Health BenefitsFuture Medical CostsIntergenerational Discounting
The future costs of regulatory programs to protect human health are routinely discounted, but the lives they save in the future are not. To shed light on the public's attitude toward the discounting of human lives, researchers at Resources for the Future asked 2,600 individuals to choose between one hypothetical program that would save lives immediately and another that would save lives in 5, 10, 25, 50, or 100 years. From the responses, they inferred the number of lives that must be saved in the future to make people as content as saving one life today, compared this implicit discount rate to the respondents' discount rate for money, and identified several factors that affect discount rates for human lives.