Evaluating childhood policy impacts on lifetime health, wellbeing and inequality: lifecourse distributional economic evaluation

Skardaa, Ieva, Asaria, Miqdad ORCID: 0000-0002-3538-4417 and Cookson, Richard (2022) Evaluating childhood policy impacts on lifetime health, wellbeing and inequality: lifecourse distributional economic evaluation. Social Science & Medicine, 302. ISSN 0277-9536

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Abstract

We introduce and illustrate a new framework for distributional economic evaluation of childhood policies that takes a broad and long view of the impacts on health, wellbeing and inequality from a cross-sectoral whole-lifetime perspective. Total lifetime benefits and public cost savings are estimated using lifecourse microsimulation of diverse health, social and economic outcomes for each individual in a general population birth cohort from birth to death. Cost-effectiveness analysis, policy targeting analysis and distributional analysis of inequality impacts are then conducted using an index of lifetime wellbeing that allow comparisons of both value-for-money (efficiency) and distributional impact (equity) from a cross-sectoral lifetime perspective. We illustrate how this framework can be applied in practice by re-evaluating a training programme in England for parents of children at risk of conduct disorder. Our illustration uses a simple index of lifetime wellbeing based on health-related quality of life and consumption, but other indices could be used based on other kinds of outcomes data such as life satisfaction or multidimensional quality of life. We create the detailed underpinning data needed to apply the framework by using a previously published meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials to estimate the short-term effects and a previously published lifecourse microsimulation model to extrapolate the long-term effects.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/social-scien...
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Authors
Divisions:	Health Policy
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics > RJ101 Child Health. Child health services
Date Deposited:	04 Apr 2022 09:33
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 02:56
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/114575

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