HEAM seminar: Political Economy of Covid-19 Public Health Measures

November 2, 2022

Deaths per 100k persons from COVID-19 vary drastically across jurisdictions within the USA and Canada as well as between these two countries. The USA has nearly three times more deaths per capita than Canada – partially due to stricter and better respected Public Health Measures (PHM) in most Canadian provinces than in most American states. Significant economic costs are associated with these PHM; and a broad body of literature exists to measure the macro and microeconomic impact of such policies. It is also clear that mortality due to Covid-19 strongly depends on age and sex. This paper contributes to the cost-benefit analysis of COVID-19 PHM by estimating how the Net-Present-Value (NPV) of these policies differs across the Canadian population according to age, and how that relates to the political economy of PHM. The framework developed by (Bergstrom and Hartam, 2005), which employs population projections and lifetables to estimate the political support for public pension reform is adapted. Assuming individuals behave selfishly, their support for PHM depends solely on their expected NPV. The benefits of PHM are the expected Value of Life Years saved by not contracting the COVID-19 virus, for each age group and gender. The costs are measured to account for the expected loss of income due to the unemployment caused by the PHM; and the forgone consumption/leisure opportunities. Preliminary results find that minority of voting age Canadians have negative expected NPV from the PHM, while everyone aged 40 and above has a positive NPV.

 

To request the Zoom link, please email Emmanuel at emmanuel.guindon@mcmaster.ca.