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Health Economics, Fifth Edition, Charles E.Phelps, Chapter 2

(متوفر ترجمة بالعربي محترفة بواسطة كيو ام دي ، مرفقة مع الملخص و بإمكانك تحويل اللغة لعربي لتستطيع رؤيتها)

Chapter 2
Utility and Health
(first we will define Utility before exploring chapter 2.)
[UTILITY an economic term referring to the total satisfaction received from consuming a good or service.
Asking what really does create more "utility" for an individual. The most helpful answer is also the most sensible: Health itself creates happiness. We can begin to think about a reservoir of "health" that people have, and ask how medical care fits into this picture. Michael Grossman has most prominently explored the idea of "health" as an economic good, and showed how a rational economic person would have a demand curve for medical services that "derived" from the underlying demand for health itself]

This chapter begins by exploring a particular way of thinking about the relationship between health care and health itself. Economists use the idea of a productive process. This formulation begins with the idea that utility is produced by health (H) and other goods (X). In turn, medical care systematically augments health. The relationships between health and other goods are more complicated than this simple model suggests, however. Some of the things we enjoy directly (part of the bundle of goods called X) enhance our health, and other reduce it. Exercise and proper dietary composition enhance health. Consumption of ci******es, alcohol, and other drugs, as well as certain types of foods, reduces our health. Other lifestyle choices dominate health outcomes, particularly for younger persons, such as the combination of drinking and driving. The risks for most of the primary causes of death at any age are strongly affected by our own lifestyle choices.
This chapter explores the economics of several of these lifestyle issues in more detail, including economics issue related to smoking, obesity, and alcohol use. Each of these has distinct and important relationships to education. To***co use declines systematically with educational attainment. Obesity declines also with educational attainment, more so with women than men. Alcohol consumption is most complex because the type of drinking (heavy versus moderate, binge versus regular) affects health outcomes even for the same volume of drinking and because different beverage types (distilled spirits, beer, and wine) have different effects on health. As with the other health – related lifestyle choices, higher education appears to lead to less consumption of the most damaging types of alcohol (distilled spirits) and to more consumption of alcoholic beverages that actually improve health (wine, particularly some types of red wine). Much further analysis of links between education and lifestyle choices is needed before we can fully understand these behaviors.