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The Welfare Cost of Homicides in Brazil: Accounting for Heterogeneity in the Willingness to Pay for Mortality Reductions
Author(s) -
Cerqueira Daniel,
Soares Rodrigo R.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.3137
Subject(s) - welfare , willingness to pay , economics , dimension (graph theory) , value (mathematics) , value of life , social welfare , social cost , demographic economics , econometrics , actuarial science , statistics , microeconomics , mathematics , political science , pure mathematics , law , market economy
This paper estimates the health dimension of the welfare cost of homicides in Brazil incorporating age, gender, educational, and regional heterogeneities. We use a marginal willingness to pay approach to assign monetary values to the welfare cost of increased mortality due to violence. Results indicate that the present discounted value of the welfare cost of homicides in Brazil corresponds to roughly 78% of the GDP or, in terms of yearly flow, 2.3%. The analysis also shows that reliance on aggregate data to perform such calculations can lead to biases of around 20% in the estimated social cost of violence. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.