Cost Effectiveness Analysis of Various Kinds of Risk Reduction Policies--A Comparative Study. A. Kishimoto, Graduate school of Economics, Kyoto University, Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606, Japan
In evaluating public policies that reduce mortality risks, cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is widely employed. Although some studies have been made on cost per life saved (CPLS) in health, environmental, safety policies in Japan, the employed methods are different from each other. The first purpose of this study is to compare CPLS across these different fields. Some studies proved that CPLSs in environmental policies were higher than that in non-environmental policies. Nakanishi (1994) explains this by the existence of ecological risk. The second purpose of this study is to ascertain whether this fact hold true also in Japan. The study employs the unified method that uses gain of life expectancy as a measure of effectiveness. As non-environmental policies, I take traffic safety investment and asbestos removal are safety policies, three kinds of cancer screenings as health policies. These estimated values of CPLS are much lower than those values of other studies dealing with environmental policies except asbestos removal. As for asbestos removal, individual risk for particular people is high enough to remove. In Japan, there is no legislation which require public policies to attain economic efficiency up till now. These estimation will be useful in making decisions about future public policies.