Normative foundations for equity-sensitive population health evaluation functions

Standard models for the evaluation of population health, such as the so-called models of aggregate Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs), or aggregate Healthy Years Equiva- lent (HYEs), are usually criticized on equity grounds. We provide in this paper normative justi_cations for alternative equity-sensitive models, such as the so-called models of mul- tiplicative QALYs, multiplicative HYEs, and generalizations of the two. Our axiomatic approach assumes social preferences over distributions of individual health states experi- enced in a given period of time. It conveys informational simplicity, as it does not require information about individual preferences on health.