Grantee Research Project Results
Benefit Transfer Using Values from Adult-oriented Studies to Evaluate Children's Health Effects (Phase 1 - - Theory)
EPA Grant Number: R828716Title: Benefit Transfer Using Values from Adult-oriented Studies to Evaluate Children's Health Effects (Phase 1 - - Theory)
Investigators: Crocker, Thomas D. , Agee, Mark D. , Shogren, Jason F.
Institution: University of Wyoming
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: December 1, 2000 through November 30, 2003
Project Amount: $103,495
RFA: Valuation of Children's Health Effects (2000) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Children's Health , Environmental Justice , Human Health
Description:
This research will show how 1) information on children's biological responses to environmental hazard exposures, and 2) the tradeoffs made by parents with limited time and money who must choose between their own consumption and investments in their children's futures can be used jointly to infer the economic values parents attach to reductions in children's exposures to toxic substances, and to child health improvements.
Children live with adults who allocate available household time and money resources among all family members, including children. Because such resources are limited, these adults (parents) must trade off their own well-being against the well-being of their children. Changes in environmental conditions can alter household resources and can affect the health of some household members more than others. These changes influence the tradeoffs parents choose to make because they alter the relative benefits and costs to parents of alternative time and money investments for household members. For example, parents may alleviate the impact of neighborhood pollution upon their child by reducing the child's exposures or by purchasing medical help to cure the child. But these actions are costly, implying that the parents must sacrifice their own consumption or investments in their own health protection. These parental behaviors may amplify or temper the biological responses children make to environmental hazards. This research describes how parents' choices among investments in parents' own-consumption, parents' own-health, and child health change when environmental conditions change.
This project will show how measures of parents' valuations of own-health may be transformed into measures of parents' valuations of the health of their children. The research will provide a technique or techniques by which adult valuations of own-health may be transformed into adult valuations of children's health.
Approach:
The researchers will construct economic models of the determinants of intra-household allocations of time and money and of the decision processes leading to these allocations. The investigators will also develop economic models of internal household allocations of parental time and money resources to guide efforts to obtain empirical measures of parents' valuations of the own-health and the child health effects of environmental change. The research will also undertake pilot empirical tests and demonstrations of model propositions using the National Maternal and Infant Health Survey and other existing data sets.Expected Results:
Public health officials want information on the economic benefits of reducing environmental hazards thought to affect children disproportionately in order to evaluate the efficiency of policies designed to reduce these hazards. Original research measuring these benefits is extremely limited and new research to do so is expensive. The results of this project will show how the numerous existing studies of the money equivalent of the adult health benefits of environmental improvements may be translated into money measures of the benefits to child health of these same improvements.Publications and Presentations:
Publications have been submitted on this project: View all 18 publications for this projectJournal Articles:
Journal Articles have been submitted on this project: View all 5 journal articles for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
children's health values; adults' health values; benefits transfer., RFA, Health, Scientific Discipline, Susceptibility/Sensitive Population/Genetic Susceptibility, Health Risk Assessment, genetic susceptability, Children's Health, Social Science, Ecology and Ecosystems, benefits transfer, Human Health Risk Assessment, sensitive populations, environmental hazard exposures, harmful environmental agents, lead, behavioral assessment, biological response, children's health values, environmental values, household allocation, modeling parental behavior, children, environmental health hazard, toxics, adult valuation of children's healthProgress and Final Reports:
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.