Mortality Risk Perceptions: A Bayesian Reassessment

"This study uses data on perceived and actual mortality risks to test several alternative Bayesian models of the factors influencing risk beliefs. The analysis...indicates that while the hazard rate for the individual age group is an influential factor, the overall population death rate and the discounted expected number of life years lost due to the cause of death are also influential in affecting risk perceptions.... The predictive power of a linear perception model increases with the level of the risk and is least accurate for very small risks."     

Background Risks and the Value of a Statistical Life

We examine the effects of background mortality and financial risks on an individual's willingness to pay to reduce his mortality risk (the value of statistical life or VSL). Under reasonable assumptions about risk aversion and prudence with respect to wealth in the event of survival and with respect to bequests in the event of death, background mortality and financial risks decrease VSL. The effects of large mortality or financial risks on VSL can be substantial, but the effects of small background risks are negligible. These results suggest that the commonplace failure to account for background risk in evaluating VSL is unlikely to produce substantial bias in most applications.     

Smoking Risks in Spain: Part III—Determinants of Smoking Behavior

Using original survey data from Spain, this paper assesses the determinants of smoking behavior. This study examines the effect on smoking of the most diverse set of risk measures ever considered: lung cancer, relative lung cancer risks, lung disease, heart disease, relative heart disease risks, lost life expectancy to smokers, and various risk measures for passive smoking. Smoking measures include cigarette smoking, the number of cigarettes smoked, and pipe and cigar smoking. Primary smoking risks have a more consistent negative effect on smoking than perceived passive smoking risks.     

Smoking Risks in Spain: Part II—Perceptions of Environmental Tobacco Smoke Externalities

Previous studies of smoking risk beliefs have focused almost exclusively on risks to the smoker. Using an original set of survey data from Spain, we examine the public's perceived risks from exposures to environmental tobacco smoke. The risk categories considered included lung cancer, heart disease, life expectancy loss, and low birth weight for children of smoking mothers. Risk beliefs were quite high, often dwarfing scientific estimates of the risk. The results are consistent with overestimation of risks from highly publicized, low probability events.     

The value of changes in life expectancy

Valuation formulas for age-specific mortality risks are derived from life-cycle allocation theory under uncertainty and related to empirical estimates of the value of life. A change in an age-specific mortality risk affects all subsequent survivor functions and reallocates consumption and labor supply over the entire life cycle. The value of eliminating a risk to life at a specific age is the expected present value of consumer surplus from that age forward. Approximate numerical extrapolations from cross-section estimates imply that values decrease rapidly in current age and in the distance between current age and age at risk.     

On the Contingent Valuation of Safety and the Safety of Contingent Valuation: Part 2 - The CV/SG "Chained" Approach

This article reports the results of a study aimed at estimating a willingness-to-pay based value of statistical life for road risks using a multi-stage approach which involves "chaining together" responses to contingent valuation and standard gamble questions.The rationale for employing a multi-stage approach is to break the wealth/risk of death trade-off down into a number of conceptually manageable steps, thereby trying to attenuate the various biases that appear to be pervasive in responses to more direct contingent valuation questions in the health and safety field.     

The Value of a Statistical Life: A Critical Review of Market Estimates Throughout the World

A substantial literature over the past thirty years has evaluated tradeoffs between money and fatality risks. These values in turn serve as estimates of the value of a statistical life. This article reviews more than 60 studies of mortality risk premiums from ten countries and approximately 40 studies that present estimates of injury risk premiums. This critical review examines a variety of econometric issues, the role of unionization in risk premiums, and the effects of age on the value of a statistical life. Our meta-analysis indicates an income elasticity of the value of a statistical life from about 0.5 to 0.6. The paper also presents a detailed discussion of policy applications of these value of a statistical life estimates and related issues, including risk-risk analysis.     

The Potential for Reducing Mortality in Russia

This article attempts to assess current national and regional reserves for reducing the mortality rate in Russia. It explores the potential to reduce the mortality rate in comparison to comparable international benchmarks in rates of growth and gains in life expectancy at birth, identifies a range of circumstances that have an adverse impact on the population’s health in post-Soviet Russia, and shows that the main reserve for reducing mortality remains the “lost health capital” that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union and continued in the 1990s. Finally, it assesses the current regional potential for lowering the mortality rate, which is “hidden” in differences between regions leading in life expectancy (with the exception of extremes) and the country’s remaining territories. The conclusion presents data revealing the life expectancy of men and women.     

The strength of sensitivity to ambiguity

We report an experiment where each subject’s ambiguity sensitivity is measured by an ambiguity premium, a concept analogous to and comparable with a risk premium. In our design, some tasks feature known objective risks and others uncertainty about which subjects have imperfect, heterogeneous, information (“ambiguous tasks”). We show how the smooth ambiguity model can be used to calculate ambiguity premia. A distinctive feature of our approach is estimation of each subject’s subjective beliefs about the uncertainty in ambiguous tasks. We find considerable heterogeneity among subjects in beliefs and ambiguity premia; and that, on average, ambiguity sensitivity is about as strong as risk sensitivity.     

Communication of ambiguous risk information

This paper reports on the responses of 646 individuals to environmental risk information involving different forms of risk ambiguity. Recipients of more than one set of risk information do not simply average the risk levels provided. Rather, a variety of aspects of the nature of the risks that are communicated influence their probabilistic beliefs. Individuals' perceptions of the risk levels to which they are exposed are likely to be greater: (i) for more ambiguous risks, (ii) for risks for which the unfavorable risk evidence is presented last even when there is no temporal order, (iii) for risks for which the most unfavorable risk studies have been performed most recently, and (iv) for risks where there is asymmetry in the risk ambiguity that imposes substantial potential downside risks. Although these effects are modest for the median individual, the potential for extreme responses that reflect only the most adverse or the most favorable piece of information provided is quite prevalent. These findings are of interest more generally in that they indicate how individuals form their risk perceptions in the presence of risk ambiguity.The authors would like to thank the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for support of this work under Cooperative Agreements Number CR-815445-01-2 and Number CR-814388-02-1. Dr. Alan Carlin and Dr. Ann Fisher provided valuable guidance in the design of the project, and Dr. Doyle Graham and Dr. Douglas Anthony offered generous assistance in communicating the medical consequences of nerve disease to subjects. Jon LaScala assisted superbly in the administration and analysis of the survey, and Patricia Born provided additional computer programming assistance.     

Do They Know What They are Doing? Risk Perceptions and Smoking Behaviour Among Swedish Teenagers

Cross-sectional survey data on Swedish adolescents aged 12–18 was used to analyse perceived risks of smoking-related lung cancer, the determinants of these risk perceptions, and how these perceptions related to smoking behaviour. Three major conclusions were drawn: (1) that both smokers and non-smokers overestimated the risks of lung cancer, (2) that these risk perceptions fell substantially with age, but nevertheless implied risk overestimation, and (3) that individuals with higher perceived risks were less likely to be smokers but that risk beliefs had no effect on the number of cigarettes smoked.     

Risk Perceptions and Alcohol Consumption among Young People

Swedish cross-sectional survey data on young individuals was used to analyse the determinants of perceived risks of alcohol use and how these perceptions relate to drinking behaviour. Three major conclusions were drawn: (1) that people overestimate the risks of alcoholism, (2) that these risk perceptions fall substantially with age, but nevertheless imply risk overestimation, and (3) that education about alcohol, narcotics and tobacco leads individuals to perceive risks more correctly and to have lower risk beliefs. An additional finding was that individuals with higher perceived risks were less likely to consume alcohol. Equations were estimated both separately and simultaneously.     

Electronic cigarette risk beliefs and usage after the vaping illness outbreak

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty - New national survey evidence on electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) risk beliefs indicates that people substantially overestimate the health risks posed by...     

Admissible utility functions for health, longevity, and wealth: integrating monetary and life-year measures

The value of reducing health and mortality risks is often measured using value per statistical life (VSL) or one of several life-year measures (e.g., life years, quality-adjusted life years, disability-adjusted life years). I derive the utility function that is admissible when preferences for health and longevity, conditional on wealth, are consistent with any life-year measure (LYM) and examine the implications for marginal willingness to pay (WTP) for increases in health, longevity, and current-period survival probability. I conclude that marginal WTP for any LYM is decreasing and that VSL is increasing in the LYM. These results imply that cost-effectiveness analysis using a fixed monetary value per LYM is not consistent with economic welfare theory and that the benefit of a health improvement cannot be calculated by multiplying the change in a LYM by a constant.     

New social risks in postindustrial society: Some evidence on responses to active labour market policies from Eurobarometer

One result of the complex economic and social changes currently impacting on state welfare is the emergence of what may be termed "new social risks" as part of the shift to a postindustrial society. These concern access to adequately paid employment, particularly for lower-skilled young people, in an increasingly flexible labour market, and managing work-life balance for women with family responsibilities engaged in full-time careers. They coexist with the old social risks that traditional welfare states developed to meet, which typically concern retirement from or interruption to paid work, in most cases for a male "breadwinner". New social risks offer policymakers the opportunity to transform vice into virtue by replacing costly passive benefits with policies which mobilize the workforce, arguably enhancing economic competitiveness, and reduce poverty among vulnerable groups. However, the political constituencies to support such policies are weak, since the risks affect people most strongly at particular life stages and among specific groups. This paper examines attitudes to new social risk labour market policies in four contrasting European countries. It shows that attitudes in this area are strongly embedded in overall beliefs about the appropriate scale, direction and role of state welfare interventions, so that the weakness of new social risk constituencies does not necessarily undermine the possibility of attracting support for such policies, provided they are developed in ways that do not contradict national traditions of welfare state values.     

中国贬谪文学创作中的生命关怀——以唐代贬谪者的文学创作为例

贬谪是唐代政治生活与文学创作中一个很常见的现象。唐代贬谪者在从朝堂贬向蛮荒的命运陡降过程中，在其骚怨情感反应与生活被动适应上，普遍表现出一种真切主动的生命关怀色彩。他们在对生命特质的感性体认、对死生问题的关注、对家园回归的渴求、对亲情的向往、对以超越现实苦难为旨归的宗教情怀等方面，都表现出了迥异于往常的生命关怀色彩。     

人生何以需要道德信仰

道德作为社会生活的必然产物,必须以信仰为基础。道德信仰的生成有着自然、社会和人生的逻辑根据。从人生角度而言,人生具有有限性、未完成性和创造性,这为道德信仰的生成提供了逻辑前提与基础,从而使道德信仰成为一种必然性的产物。     

Smoking Risks in Spain: Part I—Perception of Risks to the Smoker

Survey evidence for the Spanish population indicates that perceptions of lung cancer risk and life expectancy loss due to smoking are similar to estimates found in the United States. This paper also presents new evidence on the relative lung cancer risk for smokers, the perceived risk of lung disease for smokers, the heart disease risk for smokers, and the relative heart disease risk for smokers, all of which indicate substantial risk perceptions. Risk beliefs are particularly high for younger respondents, but are lower for better educated respondents.     

Risk aversion and religion

We use a dataset for a demographically representative sample of the Dutch population that contains a revealed preference risk attitude measure, as well as detailed information about participants’ religious background, to study three issues. First, we find strong confirmatory evidence that more religious people, as measured by church membership or attendance, are more risk averse with regard to financial risks. Second, we obtain some evidence that Protestants are more risk averse than Catholics in such tasks. Third, our data suggest that the link between risk aversion and religion is driven by social aspects of church membership, rather than by religious beliefs themselves.     

Risk Perceptions and Value of a Statistical Life for Air Pollution and Traffic Accidents: Evidence from Bangkok,Thailand

This paper presents results of two contingent valuation surveys conducted in Bangkok measuring individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce mortality risk arising from two risk contexts: air pollution traffic accidents Results from the risk perception survey disclose that respondents view the two risks differently. WTP to reduce air pollution risk is influenced by degrees of dread, severity, controllability and personal exposure, while WTP to reduce traffic accident risk is influenced by perceived immediate occurrence. Nevertheless, the value of a statistical life (VSL) for both air pollution and traffic accidents are comparable (US$0.74 to $1.32 million and US$0.87 to $1.48 million, respectively). This indicates that the risk perception factor alone has little impact on the VSL, a finding similar to previous studies using program choice indifferences.JEL Classification: I18, D61, J17, J28