Your money or your health: time preferences and trading money for health.

BACKGROUND: Time preferences reflect how future outcomes are valued relative to present ones. Previous research has found that time preferences for one domain (say, money) are inconsistent (uncorrelated) with those from another (say, health). The present studies evaluated whether this domain independence was due to decision makers' sensitivity to a normatively appropriate principle about the tradability of health and money. METHOD: Participants read a scenario in which health and money were described as tradable or not tradable and then responded to hypothetical intertemporal trade-off questions. RESULTS. In experiment 1, participants showed higher agreement between health and money time preferences in the tradable condition, as predicted. In experiment 2, participants responded from either an individual decision maker or policy maker perspective. Perspective had little effect on agreement between health and money discount rates, but there was again higher agreement in the tradable as compared to the not-tradable condition. CONCLUSION: Previous demonstrations of domain independence may have been due in part to decision makers' assumption that health and money are not tradable.     

Local public health agency funding: money begets money.

Local public health agencies are funded federal, state, and local revenue sources. There is a common belief that increases from one source will be offset by decreases in others, as when a local agency might decide it must increase taxes in response to lowered federal or state funding. This study tests this belief through a cross-sectional study using data from Missouri local public health agencies, and finds, instead, that money begets money. Local agencies that receive more from federal and state sources also raise more at the local level. Given the particular effectiveness of local funding in improving agency performance, these findings that nonlocal revenues are amplified at the local level, help make the case for higher public health funding from federal and state levels.     

Tobacco, politics and economics: implications for global health.

This paper examines the expanding presence of multinational cigarette companies into almost every country in the world, and discusses the health implications of this global penetration. Cigarettes deserve special attention because tobacco is the only legally available consumer product that is harmful to one's health when used as intended. A temptation exists to blame governments for the existence of health-threatening products within their borders. However, this paper illustrates the extent to which extra-national forces influence domestic policies and circumstances. Cigarette smokers are often blamed for their lethal habit, despite billion-dollar promotional schemes which attract people to smoking, obscuring the harmful consequences of consuming a highly addictive drug. Multinational cigarette companies are increasingly targeting Asian and Third World populations. To facilitate this market penetration, political avenues are often pursued with considerable success, disregarding the health implications associated with cigarette tobacco. The use of tobacco in development programs (e.g. the U.S. 'Food for Peace' program) has political and economic implications for donor and recipient countries, and lucrative advantages for the tobacco companies. However, this paper recommends that corporate profits and foreign policy should not be pursued at the expense of tobacco-related diseases and premature deaths among Third World peoples.