Estimating the Trend in Health Time Preference Rate (A Case Study of High-Income Countries)

Authors

1 Department of Economic Development and Planning, Faculty of Management and Economics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Economic Research Institute, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

People’s behavior is clearly related to their time horizon. As people’s time preference rate increases, planning becomes increasingly myopic. This study uses the mimic model to examine the trend of changes in the time preference rate of health between 2000 and 2019. The results show that the time preference rate for health has different trends, regarding the slope and intercept of the changes. The trend in time preference rates for health is downward with a small slope in France, Sweden, and the US, whereas it is downward with a large slope in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Due to the severity of the changes in the slope of time preference rates for health, people in the Netherlands and Switzerland are more concerned about and invested in improving their health. The time preference rate for health has an upward trend in Australia, Germany and Canada, and its slope is higher in Germany and Australia. Therefore, people prefer the interests of the present over the future in these three countries. In Norway and the UK, this trend has a constant slope, implying that people's attitudes have insignificantly changed toward health-related behaviors. The differences in the trend of time preference rates for health in the countries studied show the different effects of the policies implemented in the field of health on people’s attitudes toward healthier living in the future.

Keywords

Iranian Economic Review

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 27 November 2022

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