Health versus income amid COVID-19: What do people value more?

ABSTRACT: Public efforts to battle COVID-19 have been portrayed as a trade-off between health and the economy in the U.S. public discourse. We investigate how the U.S. general public prioritizes the health and the income dimensions amid COVID-19 using an incentivized instrument with real monetary consequences. We also employ between-subject information treatments highlighting negative health and income consequences of the pandemic. Specifically, participants have to divide monetary contributions between two charitable organizations representing either the health or the income dimension. An overwhelming majority of participants supports both dimensions, with higher monetary contributions to the health dimension (56%) compared to income (44%), but the difference is not large. Only a small fraction of

SUBMITTER: Palma MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9075613 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature