The Implications of Equal Value of Life and Prioritarianism for the Evaluation of Population Health

Juan D. Moreno-Ternero, Lars Peter Østerdal

Research output: Working paperResearch

Abstract

We analyze the implications of several principles related to the concepts of equal, or prioritarian, entitlement to continued life. These principles, when modeled as axioms for the evaluation of health distributions, and combined with some basic structural axioms, provide several characterization results of population health evaluation functions. Our analysis implies that the scope of the concepts of equal and prioritarian entitlement to continued life needs to be limited, in order to allow for morbidity (and not just mortality) concerns in the evaluation of population health.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationOdense
PublisherSyddansk Universitet
Number of pages22
Publication statusPublished - 16 Jan 2015
Externally publishedYes
SeriesCOHERE Discussion Papers
Number2015:1
ISSN2246-3097

Keywords

  • Equal value of life
  • Priority
  • Population health
  • Axioms
  • Morbidity
  • Mortality

Cite this