Estimating the Trend in Health Time Preference Rate (A Case Study of High-Income Countries)

People’s behavior is related to their time horizon. As people’s time preference rate increases, planning becomes increasingly myopic. This study employs the MIMIC model to evaluate the shifts in the health-related time preference rate in several developed countries (France, Sweden, Netherlands, Switzerland, United States, Australia, Germany, Canada, Norway, and United Kingdom) between ۲۰۰۰ and ۲۰۱۹. The results show that the time preference rate for health has different trends, regarding the slope and intercept of the changes. These differences show the different effects of the policies implemented in the field of health on people’s attitudes toward healthier living in the future. In France, the trend in time preference rates for health is downward with a small slope, in Sweden, and the US, whereas it is downward with a large slope in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Due to the severity of the changes in the slope of time preference rates for health, people in the Netherlands and Switzerland are more concerned about and invested in improving their health. The time preference rate for health has an upward trend in Australia, Germany, and Canada, and its slope is higher in Germany and Australia. Therefore, people prefer the interests of the present to the future in these three countries. In Norway and the UK, this trend has a constant slope, implying that people's attitudes have insignificantly changed toward health-related behaviors.

کلیدواژه ها:

time preference ، Health ، High-Income Countries ، MIMIC Model