The Welfare Cost of Homicides in Brazil: Accounting for Heterogeneity in the Willingness to Pay for Mortality Reductions

Arbeitspapier

This paper estimates the health dimension of the welfare cost of homicides in Brazil incorporating age, gender, educational, and regional heterogeneities. We use the marginal willingness to pay approach from the “value of life” literature to assign monetary values to the welfare cost of increased mortality due to violence. The results indicate that the present discounted value of the welfare cost of homicides in Brazil corresponds to roughly 78% of the GDP or, measured in terms of yearly flow, 2.3%. The analysis also indicates that reliance on aggregate data to perform such calculations, without taking into account the relevant dimensions of heterogeneity, can lead to biases of the order of 20% in the estimated social cost of violence

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Texto para discussão ; No. 600

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health ; Demographic Economics: Public Policy ; Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law ; Comparative Studies of Countries
• Subject: Wert des Menschenlebens ; Gewalt ; Wohlfahrtsanalyse ; Zahlungsbereitschaftsanalyse ; Brasilien

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Cerqueira, Daniel R. C. ; Soares, Rodrigo R.
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Departamento de Economia
• (where): Rio de Janeiro
• (when): 2012

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/176083
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET