Valuation of Environment-Related Health Impacts: Accounting for Differences Across Age and Latency with a Particular Focus on Children – VERHI Children
VERHI Children aims at improving the incorporation of environment-related health impacts in policy-making. The project is co-ordinated by OECD and involves four research partners and recognised specialists with extensive experience in the valuation of health risks and environmental damages.
VERHI Children aims at improving the incorporation of environment-related health impacts in policy-making. The project is co-ordinated by OECD and involves four research partners and recognised specialists with extensive experience in the valuation of health risks and environmental damages.
It focuses on two measures employed when examining environmental policies that save lives: the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) estimated from willingness to pay for mortality risk reductions, and Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALY). The former is generally used in benefit-cost analysis of proposed environmental policies, while the latter is often used in medical decisionmaking and cost-effectiveness analysis of public health programs.
A review of the literature will be prepared to compare the concepts of VLS and QALY, reconcile differences between them, and establishe further research needs. Three research teams will develop survey instruments based on different methods and submit them to samples of parents in Italy, the Czech Republic, and the UK. Finally, the project will explore the potential for benefits transfer across countries with different socioeconomic characteristics.
FEEM has joint responsibility for survey development (WP4) with the University of East Anglia (UEA). This includes conducting focus groups, preparation and testing of initial draft survey questionnaire, development of the survey design, and communication with other consortium members prior to finalisation. FEEM will incorporate both contingent valuation (see Alberini et al., 2004, 2006) and conjoint choice experiments (see Alberini et al., 2007) in its questionnaire.
FEEM is also responsible for the implementation of the survey in Italy (WP5). The final sample size will be about 1900. The same questionnaire will be translated into the Czech and submitted to a sample of residents of the Czech Republic, for a sample size of about 1500.
Given the expertise of its researchers, FEEM will devote considerable efforts to devising a study design that addresses the issues of latency and age, and in the statistical modeling of the data (WP6). It will also be responsible for report writing, preparation of papers suitable for publication in academic journals, as well as inputs into the final project report.