This article reviews economic evidence on health-dependent utility functions and presents new estimates of utility functions for cancer. Estimates of health-dependent utility functions have found that mild adverse health impacts can be treated as monetary equivalents. Severe health consequences also reduce utility levels but have an additional effect of altering the structure of utility functions by reducing the marginal utility of income. The implications of past studies are often misleading when they fail to account for income losses and medical expenses associated with serious ailments. This article’s estimates of the structure of utility functions for cancer indicate a substantially lower marginal utility of income at any given income level. This result is consistent with the welfare consequences of other severe health effects, which impose harms that are not tantamount to a monetary loss.

中文翻译：

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用于轻度和严重健康风险的实用程序功能

本文回顾了有关健康依赖性效用函数的经济证据，并提出了癌症效用函数的新估计。对依赖于健康的效用函数的估计发现，轻度的不利健康影响可以视为金钱等价物。严重的健康后果也降低了效用水平，但通过减少收入的边际效用，具有改变效用功能结构的附加效果。当过去的研究未能解释与严重疾病相关的收入损失和医疗费用时，它们的含义往往会产生误导。本文对癌症效用函数结构的估计表明，在任何给定的收入水平下，收入的边际效用都大大降低。这一结果与其他严重健康影响的福利后果相一致，