Individual time preferences for own health: an application of a dichotomous choice question with follow-up

Abstract

This paper explores the use of the dichotomous choice question with follow-up to examine intertemporal preferences for non-fatal changes in own health. Maximum likelihood estimation by censored logistic regression is used to analyse the data collected from the general public. The results show that the average estimated implied discount rate is equal to 0.073 for the full sample and 0.106 for respondents who have positive implied discount rates in the open-ended questions which were also contained in the questionnaire. The implied discount rates vary from 0.024 to 0.166 depending onthe age of the respondent andthe periodof delay offered(5 or 13 years).