Economic Valuation of Environmental Health Risks to Children

The relationship between environment and children’s health has been the subject of increasing interest these last ten years. For example, many OECD member countries are reporting asthma epidemics exacerbated by air pollution: in the United States nearly 1 in 13 school-age children (approximately 4.8 million) has asthma, and the rate is increasing more rapidly in school-age children than in any other group. The importance of this issue has resulted in a growing number of epidemiological studies aiming at better understanding and better characterising the relationship between environmental pollution and the health of children. However, in many respects, the valuation of children’s health strongly differs from the valuation of adults’ health and constitutes a real challenge for analysts as well as for decision-makers. Consequently, this book proposes an in depth analysis of the main methodological difficulties associated with estimating the social value of a reduction in risk to children. Questions such as how to elicit children’s preferences, what valuation methodology and benefit measure to choose, how to discount benefits to children’s health, and how to account for economic uncertainties in this specific context of economic valuation will be systematically examined in order to define key policy implications and to pave the way for further research.