Monetary values of increasing life expectancy: sensitivity to shifts of the survival curve

增加预期寿命的货币价值：对生存曲线变化的敏感性

• 批准号: 1824492
• 负责人: James Hammitt
• 金额: $ 48万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-07-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1824492&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Monetary; values; increasing; life; expectancy

Individuals' risks of dying at different ages are affected by government policies including health, safety, and environmental regulations. To help evaluate whether new and existing regulations enhance national welfare, government policies require comparing estimates of the monetary value of the life-saving and other benefits with the costs of the regulations. The monetary value of reductions in mortality risk is usually estimated using one of two approaches. One approach, common in transportation and environmental regulation, estimates the annual monetary benefits as the product of a "value per statistical life" (VSL) and the expected number of "lives saved" per year. The second approach, common in food-safety and drug regulation, estimates the benefits as the product of a "value per statistical life year" (VSLY) and the average increase in life expectancy. Because life expectancy depends on mortality risk at all future ages, this second approach assumes that individuals assign the same monetary value to any time path of risk reduction that produces the same gain in life expectancy; e.g., a reduction in accident risk when young or heart-attack risk when older. This assumption is challenged by recent research that finds individuals have systematically different preferences over time paths of mortality-risk reduction; some people prefer near-term risk reductions, others prefer risk reductions at older ages. The goal of this research is to estimate the monetary value of mortality-risk reduction in the American population and to describe how it varies with the total gain in life expectancy and the time path of annual risk reductions. This knowledge should help in refining estimates of the monetary value of the benefits of certain government policies for comparison with their costs, and contribute to decision making in other domains such as health care where evaluation is less formal.The project will develop a stated-preference survey instrument, administer the survey over the internet to a sample of 1000 or more individuals representative of the adult US population, and analyze the results to determine how the monetary value of mortality-risk reduction depends on the gain in life expectancy and the time path of the risk reductions. The survey will present to each respondent a description and graphic illustrating his or her baseline annual chances of dying in or surviving each of the following decades through age 100 (conditional on age and gender). It will also present perturbations of this baseline hazard function, obtained by reducing mortality risk for only the first decade, and by reducing mortality risk in all future decades by subtracting a constant or multiplying by a constant. The three perturbations will be calibrated to produce the same increase in life expectancy. Respondents will be asked to report their preferences between each pair of the three perturbations (to test for consistency) and separately to report their willingnessThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

个人在不同年龄的死亡风险受到政府政策的影响，包括健康、安全和环境法规。为了帮助评估新的和现有的法规是否提高了国家福利，政府政策需要将挽救生命和其他好处的货币价值估计与法规的成本进行比较。降低死亡风险的货币价值通常用两种方法之一来估计。一种在运输和环境监管中很常见的方法是，将每年的经济效益估算为“每统计生命价值”（VSL）和每年“拯救生命”的预期数量的乘积。第二种方法在食品安全和药品监管中很常见，它将收益估算为“每统计生命年价值”（VSLY）和平均预期寿命增长的乘积。由于预期寿命取决于未来所有年龄段的死亡风险，第二种方法假设个人对任何降低风险的时间路径赋予相同的货币价值，从而产生相同的预期寿命增益；例如，年轻时减少事故风险，年老时减少心脏病发作风险。这一假设受到了最近研究的挑战，研究发现，随着时间的推移，个体对降低死亡风险的路径有系统的不同偏好；有些人倾向于短期降低风险，有些人则倾向于在老年时降低风险。本研究的目的是估计美国人口死亡风险降低的货币价值，并描述它如何随预期寿命的总增益和每年风险降低的时间路径而变化。这方面的知识应有助于改进对某些政府政策的好处的货币价值的估计，以便与这些政策的成本进行比较，并有助于在卫生保健等评估不太正式的其他领域作出决策。该项目将开发一种声明偏好调查工具，通过互联网对代表美国成年人口的1000或更多个人进行抽样调查，并分析结果，以确定降低死亡率风险的货币价值如何取决于预期寿命的增加和风险降低的时间路径。该调查将向每位受访者提供一份描述和图表，说明他或她在接下来的几十年里每年死亡或存活到100岁的基线年机会（取决于年龄和性别）。它还将呈现出对这一基线危险函数的扰动，该函数仅通过降低第一个十年的死亡率风险，以及通过减去一个常数或乘以一个常数来降低未来所有十年的死亡率风险。这三种扰动将被校准，以产生相同的预期寿命增加。受访者将被要求在每对扰动中报告他们的偏好（以测试一致性），并单独报告他们的意愿。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。