On Techniques to Value the Impact of Environmental Hazards on Children's Health

This paper describes alternative empirical techniques of economic analysis to assess the monetary value of human health, and outlines the issues that arise when these techniques are transported to value environmental hazard interventions intended to improve the health of young children. It examines four economic valuation techniques currently used to assess changes in human health (i.e., cost of illness method, hedonic method, averting behavior method, and contingent valuation method) and critiques the applicability of these techniques for assessing the value of children's health changes