The optimal design of assisted reproductive technologies policies.

Autor: Leroux ML; Departement des Sciences Economiques, ESG-UQAM, Montréal, Quebec, Canada.; CIRANO, Montréal, Quebec, Canada.; CORE, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.; CESifo, Munich, Germany., Pestieau P; CORE, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.; Toulouse School of Economics, Toulouse, France.; Université de Liege, Liege, Belgium., Ponthiere G; Hoover Chair in Economic and Social Ethics, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Health economics [Health Econ] 2024 Jul; Vol. 33 (7), pp. 1454-1479. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Mar 12.
DOI: 10.1002/hec.4822
Abstrakt: This paper studies the optimal fiscal treatment of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in an economy where individuals differ in their reproductive capacity (or fecundity) and in their wage. We find that the optimal ART tax policy varies with the postulated social welfare criterion. Utilitarianism redistributes only between individuals with unequal fecundity and wages but not between parents and childless individuals. To the opposite, ex post egalitarianism (which gives absolute priority to the worst-off in realized terms) redistributes from individuals with children toward those without children, and from individuals with high fecundity toward those with low fecundity, so as to compensate for both the monetary cost of ART and the disutility from involuntary childlessness resulting from unsuccessful ART investments. Under asymmetric information and in order to solve for the incentive problem, utilitarianism recommends to either tax or subsidize ART investments of low-fecundity-low-productivity individuals at the margin, depending on the degree of complementarity between fecundity and ART in the fertility technology. On the opposite, ex post egalitarianism always recommends marginal taxation of ART.
(© 2024 The Authors. Health Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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