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The Influences of Prevention on the Quality of Life

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Abstract

This research proposes the concept of “utility-adjusted life expectancy” (UALE), which adjusts the lifetime survival function with a more comprehensive utility measure that combines utilities from both consumption and health to investigate the influences of prevention intervention on a population’s well-being. We find that an economy with appropriate preventative healthcare provisions is associated with better human well-being and greater UALE in terms of utility-adjusted life years (UALYs). Based on Taiwan’s experiences, when the share of prevention spending to GDP increases from real 0.27% to 1.19% for growth maximization, the per capita GDP growth rate increases from 3.2% to 4%. Human well-being increases from 26.37 UALYs to 32.57 UALYs. Over all, human well-being increases by 6.2 UALYs. When this share is at 2.03% for welfare maximization, the economy grows at 3.9%, and the UALE increases by 6.65 UALYs. The economy trades a 0.1% economic growth rate reduction for 0.45 UALYs of well-being improvement.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (Grant no. MOST104-2410-H-006-109 -, MOST105-2410-H-006-091, MOST 107-2410-H-006-082-, and MOST 108-2410-H-006 -088 -MY2). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Economics and Department of Public Health, National Cheng Kung University, No. 1 University Road, Tainan, 701, Taiwan

    Fuhmei Wang

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  1. Fuhmei Wang
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Correspondence to Fuhmei Wang.

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Wang, F. The Influences of Prevention on the Quality of Life. Applied Research Quality Life 16, 129–139 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-019-09759-4

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