We develop a social choice experiment to estimate public preferences on population ethics. Our experiment poses three within-subject treatments in which participants allocate scarce resources to determine the health-related quality-of-life, and existence, of two population groups. Within a flexible social welfare function, we estimate participant-level preferences for inequality aversion, average vs total welfare maximisation, and minimum 'critical level'thresholds. By combining random behavioural and random utility models we also explicitly model 'noise'in decision making. Using a sample of UK adults (n= 115, obs .= 5,060), we find that 98.7% of respondents are inequality averse, prioritising the worst-off at the expense of efficiently maximising overall health. The modal group of participants (39.2%) maximise total welfare and have a critical level threshold of zero, however there is extensive heterogeneity in participants' population preferences. We then demonstrate how these preferences can aid policymaking, where difficult trade-offs emerge between equity and efficiency, average and total welfare, and population size.
Super-interesting! #PHEthx #PopulationLevelBioethics #Bioethics #PublicHealthEthics #PublicChoiceTheory #DeliberativeDemocracy #PopulationEthics
papers.tinbergen.nl/24067.pdf
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