Economic loss from COVID-19 fatalities across countries: a VSL approach

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 has quickly propagated throughout the globe and triggered the worst economic crisis the world has experienced in recent history. We estimate mortality rates and associated economic loss of fatalities for different contagion suppression scenarios in a worldwide group of countries. We adjust previous estimates of mortality rates by adjusting for lower healthcare capacity to treat critically ill patients in lower-income countries. Furthermore, we adjust previous estimates of the economic loss from fatalities by controlling for the age profile of victims. The results show significant economic gains in adopting mitigation strategies, but the marginal gains decrease when moving from mitigation to suppression strategies. Moreover, lower-income countries gain less in moving from no intervention to mitigation and still less in moving from mitigation to suppression than higher-income countries do.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• interventions
• mortality
• economic loss
• value of statistical life

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I12
• I18

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge contributions from Patrick Walker, Zack Barnett-Howell, Mushfiq Mobarak, Aart Kraay, Steven Pennings, and Firas Raad.

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest was reported.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.