Health State Valuation and Its Socio-Economic Factors: Online Samples from the U.S. and Canada

oleh: Liang Wang

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2021-01-01

Deskripsi

This paper seeks to explore how people value the state of health and what socio-economic factors they might consider. I conducted an online experiment and a survey to elicit individuals’ decisions under hypothetical health states, which vary at three levels: mild, moderate, and severe. The socio-economic factors mainly include payment, personal financial situation, hospital service, support from their family, etc. The subjects were from two separate online pools of the United States and Canada, which have similar socio-economic backgrounds and different health care systems. This paper presents that subjects are sensitive to different levels of health states. In those who choose the risky medical treatment under the same health states, the Canadian participants are willing to accept a lower success probability. Among the socio-economic factors that are significant to this health-related decision, some factors are only significant in one country’s participants. For the American sample, it is “access to health insurance”, while for the Canadian sample, it is “disturbances in everyday family life”.