Income Effects and the Value of Health

Although valuations of risk should increase with income, hedonic wage studies have not been well suited to assessing this relationship. Using survey data on consumer valuations of product safety, this paper analyzes the role of income effects for several utility functions. The methodology developed in this paper assesses the effect of income on the certainty equivalent value of the health effect (income elasticities range from 0.18 to 0.39) and on the risk-money tradeoff for small changes in risk (income elasticities range from 0.17 to 0.38). Health status is a normal economic good.