This paper accounts for the value of children and future generations in the evaluation of health policies. This is achieved through the incorporation of altruism and fertility in a "value of life" type of framework. We are able to express adults’ willingness to pay for changes in child...

Individuals' risk preferences are estimated and employed in a variety of settings, notably including choices in financial, labor, and product markets. Recent work, especially in financial economics, provides estimates of individuals' coefficients of relative risk aversion (CRRA's) in excess of...

This paper demonstrates the dramatic effect of social security wealth on individuals' asset allocation. We first discuss why social security wealth should be included in portfolio asset-mix decisions. We then draw parallels between social security benefits and inflation-indexed treasury bonds to...

Este trabajo estima los costos en términos de pérdida de bienestar asociados con el aumento de la mortalidad generado por la violenciahomicida en Colombia en el período 1990-2005. Para ello se emplea el enfoque de valoración de la vida, teniendo en cuenta la distribuciónheterogénea de los...

This paper develops an axiomatic construction of preferences that allows to compare lotteries involving lives of different lengths. Our axioms which basically formalize two assumptions - individuals are rational and have stationary preferences - leads to a class of utility functions that is much...

In this special issue of the AJLE, we bring together eight papers based for the most part on the first wave of HILDA Survey. While longitudinal surveys are like good wines-growing in value (generally) with age-the richness of the HILDA wave 1 data means that we can gain significant new insights...

This paper describes the pattern of reductions in mortality across Brazilian municipalities between 1970 and 2000, and analyzes its causes and consequences. It shows that, as in the international context, the relationship between income and life expectancy has shifted consistently in the recent...

The present paper puts the argument forward that social policy analysis today lost very much its ground of systematically approaching its objective. Rather than analysing the objective relations, processes and their foundation political arguments and discourses are very much developed on moral...

This paper provides a framework to evaluate human life based on court decisions on damages for pain and suffering. Using judgements from Germany and Austria over the last 25 years, we calculate an average Value of Damages for Pain and Suffering (VDPS) of about EUR 1.79 millions, with a minimum...

This paper incorporates fertility and altruism into the ``value of life'' framework. Two dimensions of fertility and altruism are important in evaluating life expectancy and health related gains. First, child mortality can be very important in determining welfare in a context where individuals...