Health States Worse than Death

In measuring the cardinal preferences of individuals for different states of health, investigators, including ourselves, have found some chronic conditions considered worse than death. The findings are not an isolated aberration; they have appeared in several countries and with several preference measurement instruments. This paper summarizes the available evidence concerning the existence of states worse than death, and the measurement of cardinal preferences for such states. The paper also investigates some policy issues associated with the use of such data in analytical models for the evaluation and comparison of alternative health care programmes.