Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: 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: Human Health , Children's Health , Environmental Justice
Objective:
The consensus conclusion of the scientific literature on parents’ treatment of children is deceptively simple—it pays to choose one’s parents, if only one could. How parents work with a child’s biological and cultural inheritance influences the adult the child becomes. Given this influence, any effort to value children’s health states and to establish their connections with adult health states must start with the recognition that both adults and children live as members of households. When parents have limited time and resources, they must make tradeoffs between internalized concerns for the well-being of their children and an egoistic pursuit of their own health and consumption. Any adult who is a member of a multiple person household makes internal household allocation and investments of his resources that may amplify or temper the response to a health threat the same adult would make if he lived alone without felt responsibilities for the well-being of anyone else. Inattention to resource investments and allocations among members of a household implicitly presumes these behaviors to be irrelevant to observed health outcomes, whether of parent or of child.
The objective of this research project was to enhance the theoretical understanding and to obtain empirical estimates of intrahousehold linkages so that the value parents attach to child health may be inferred from the value they attach to their own health. When adult health valuation measures do not account for internal household allocation and investment behaviors, they are likely to be inaccurate and therefore unsuitable for determining the value adults attach to their own health relative to the value they attach to the health of their children. Reinforcing and compensating behaviors within the household may systematically affect adult values of own versus children’s health. The research reviewed herein serves two purposes: (1) it structures and estimates the tradeoffs parents make between their own health and child health, thus providing information useful to the health benefits transfer problem between adults and children; and (2) it provides empirical insights into biases present in health benefits measures when internal household investment and allocation behaviors are neglected.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
The primary findings of the 12 project studies are as follows:
- Parents value child health more than their own health. For young children between 3 and 6 years, our estimates consistently say that parents value child health 1.5 to 2.0 times more than their own health. This ratio appears robust across a wide variety of auxiliary restrictions imposed on a common household production utility, maximization framework, and of data sets, estimators, health outcome measures, and sources of threats to parent and to child health.
- Estimates indicate that parental income and education increase the value parents attach to child health relative to their own health. Greater sibling numbers and child age decrease this relative value. The value mothers attach to the health of their fetuses and newborns relative to own health appears especially high.
- Parent production of child health is, for the average parent, estimated to be technically inefficient. That is, average parents can produce better child health than they do with a given set of health care inputs, or the same level of child health with fewer health inputs. Reductions in these technical inefficiencies are estimated to have substantially larger direct positive impacts on child health than do increases in family incomes. The value parents attach to child health can be increased by reducing these inefficiencies.
- Good parent health is estimated to contribute positively to the health of fetuses, newborns, and young children. Failure to recognize this contribution in health valuation exercises overstates the value of child relative to parental health.
- Successful child care involves a joint output for the parent: the parent produces child health as well as adherence to a social norm regarding appropriate child care. Adherence to this norm implies the parent values the process of producing child health as well as the child health outcome. Estimates suggest parents value the process of producing child health as well as child health itself.
- Many empirical health valuation exercises, including some undertaken in this project, may undervalue health improvements whether of parent or of child because of inattention to synergies among multiple health dimensions (physical, emotional, and behavioral) and among multiple health production technologies.
- Health valuation exercises that treat parental home life and parental work life as separable likely undervalue health improvements, as do all the empirical efforts in this project and nearly all other such exercises.
Conclusions:
Parents value the health of their children at least 1.5 to 2.0 times as much as they value their own health.
Journal Articles on this Report : 5 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
Other project views: | All 18 publications | 8 publications in selected types | All 5 journal articles |
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Type | Citation | ||
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Agee MD, Crocker TD. Parents' discount rate and the intergenerational transmission of cognitive skills. Economica 2002;69(273):143-154. |
R828716 (2001) R828716 (Final) |
Exit |
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Agee MD, Crocker T, Shogren JF. An economic assessment of parents’ self-composure: the case of physical child abuse. Topics in Economic Analysis and Policy 2004:4(1):Article 9. |
R828716 (Final) |
Exit |
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Agee MD, Crocker TD. Transferring measures of adult health benefits to children: a review of issues and results. Contemporary Economic Policy 2004;22(4):468-482. |
R828716 (Final) |
Exit |
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Agee MD, Crocker TD. Does parents' valuation of children's health mimic their valuation of own health? Journal of Population Economics 2008;21(1):231-249. |
R828716 (Final) |
Exit |
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Archer DW, Crocker TD, Shogren JF. Choosing children's environmental risk. Environmental and Resource Economics 2006;33(3):347-369. |
R828716 (Final) |
Exit |
Supplemental Keywords:
children’s health values, adults’ health values, health risk assessment, adult valuation of children’s health, health valuation, behavioral assessment, environmental hazard exposures, household allocation, lead, modeling parental behavior, sensitive populations,, RFA, Health, Scientific Discipline, Health Risk Assessment, Susceptibility/Sensitive Population/Genetic Susceptibility, Children's Health, genetic susceptability, Ecology and Ecosystems, Social Science, benefits transfer, sensitive populations, behavioral assessment, biological response, lead, children's health values, Human Health Risk Assessment, environmental values, air pollution, children, adult valuation of children's health, modeling parental behavior, environmental health hazard, harmful environmental agents, household allocation, toxicsProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe 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.