Attitudes on the Trade-Off between Poverty and Longevity
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Series
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Speaker(s)Benoît Decerf (University of Namur, Belgium and World Bank)
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FieldEmpirical Microeconomics
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LocationErasmus University Rotterdam, Campus Woudestein, room Langeveld 3.16
Rotterdam -
Date and time
February 11, 2025
12:00 - 13:00
Abstract
Poverty measures that ignore mortality sometimes yield counterintuitive comparisons. Yet, integrating mortality into poverty measurement requires selecting a value for the normative weight that captures how many years spent in poverty are considered as bad as one year of life lost. The literature offers no clear prediction on the value for this weight. We conduct a cross-country randomized survey experiment probing respondents on the trade-off they would make between poverty and longevity. When poverty is defined from national poverty lines, our estimates for this normative weight are rather low: two years spent in poverty are at least as bad as one year of life lost.