Quality Adjusted Life Years Based on Health and Consumption: A Summary Wellbeing Measure for Cross-Sectoral Economic Evaluation

Ieva Skarda, Richard Andrew Cookson, Owen Cotton-Barrett, Matthew Adler, Miqdad Asaria, Ord Toby

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We introduce a summary wellbeing measure for economic evaluation of cross-sectoral public policies with impacts on health and living standards. We show how to calculate period-specific and lifetime wellbeing using quality-adjusted life years based on widely available data on health-related quality of life and consumption and normative assumptions about three parameters – minimal consumption, standard consumption, and the elasticity of the marginal value of consumption. We also illustrate how these three parameters can be tailored to the decision-making context and varied in sensitivity analysis to provide information about the implications of alternative value judgements. As well as providing a general measure for cost-effectiveness analysis and cost-benefit analysis in terms of wellbeing, this approach also facilitates distributional analysis in terms of how many good years different population subgroups can expect to live under different policy scenarios.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-16
Number of pages16
JournalHealth Economics
Early online date22 Oct 2020
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 22 Oct 2020

Bibliographical note

© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

Keywords

  • Health
  • QALY
  • Quality of Life
  • Well Being
  • Cost Effective

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