

@mastersthesis {6296,
	title = {Demand for public health policies},
	year = {2006},
	note = {3224074},
	school = {University of Oregon},
	type = {phdPh.{D}.},
	address = {Ann Arbor},
	abstract = {I examine the demand for preventative public health policies. Many policies are designed to reduce the number of community fatalities and illnesses. The variety of health threats and the limited resources available require that policy-makers make tradeoffs among public health policies and other goods. I provide detailed information about individual preferences for public health policies. I analyze responses to a survey concerning policies to manage public heath risks. Respondents make choices between policies that reduce the number of illnesses and deaths by improving environmental quality or reducing traffic hazards. Policies are described by randomized attributes that include cases prevented, deaths prevented, and the duration of the policy. In contrast to previous studies, I consider willingness-to-pay for reductions in both morbidity and mortality. In addition to these attributes, each policy has an associated underlying cause and health threat. These causes include air pollutants, drinking water contaminants, pesticides in foods, and road hazards. The health threats are major illnesses or injuries, including unspecified cancer, leukemia, leukemia in children, colon/bladder cancer, asthma, asthma in children, lung cancer, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, respiratory disease, or car accident. The randomized design enables analysis of possible heterogeneity in preferences. This research is related to the "value of a statistical life" (VSL) literature. While the value of a statistical life measures the population average marginal rate of substitution between private income and private mortality risk, I investigate the trade-off between private income and public health benefits. This research is motivated by the observation that while the value of a statistical life is a useful metric for evaluating the mortality risk reduction benefits of some types of policies, the benefits of policies designed to improve public health may include not only reduced morbidity risks but also a cleaner environment, or other ancillary benefits. In the dissertation, I develop utility-theoretic foundations for the analysis and investigate the existence and implications of heterogeneity in willingness-to-pay based on policy attributes and individual characteristics. I also use sophisticated optimization techniques to simultaneously estimate systematically varying discount rates used to explain choices.},
	keywords = {0501:Economics, 0573:Public health, 0617:Public administration, Demand, economics, Health and environmental sciences, Health risks, Morbidity, Mortality, Public administration, Public health, Public health policies, Social sciences, Studies},
	url = {http://search.proquest.com/docview/305252734?accountid=14270},
	author = {Bosworth, Ryan Cole}
}
