Eliciting Stated Preferences : An Application to Willingness to Pay for Longevity

The economic analysis of many health policies requires an evaluation of the benefits of programs that may prolong human lives. This paper makes significant contributions toward developing credible values for longevity, including demonstrating the feasibility of applying SP market-research techniques to a new area of preference revelation and framing the problem as extending longevity under realistic health states associated with advanced age. Our results demonstrate the sensitivity of life-extension values to specific health and activity-limitation conditions. Respondents clearly indicate that quality of life affects the value of quantity of life. The paper also discusses several remaining problems that must be solved before valid and reliable longevity values can be obtained