This makes a lot of sense and does seem like an important distinction to make. I like the analysis as well.
Are there ways to apply some more numbers (i.e. in terms of the economic impact of YLL in middle age) where appropriate, or is that number not available? It seems like maybe applying it to those specific geographies could be helpful?
In addition, one consideration that I didn’t see mentioned (but may have missed) is the economic cost of additional children. Infant mortality is a key component of having more children, and therefore there is more familial early capital spent and maternal health risk when infant mortality is higher.
I’d love to have numbers for these effects. I’m not sure whether they exist.
There is definitely a substantial economic cost to infant mortality and we weren’t trying to claim otherwise. The claim was that this tends to be small in comparison to the economic cost of for example disease in children accruing the same number of DALYs.
This makes a lot of sense and does seem like an important distinction to make. I like the analysis as well.
Are there ways to apply some more numbers (i.e. in terms of the economic impact of YLL in middle age) where appropriate, or is that number not available? It seems like maybe applying it to those specific geographies could be helpful?
In addition, one consideration that I didn’t see mentioned (but may have missed) is the economic cost of additional children. Infant mortality is a key component of having more children, and therefore there is more familial early capital spent and maternal health risk when infant mortality is higher.
I’d love to have numbers for these effects. I’m not sure whether they exist.
There is definitely a substantial economic cost to infant mortality and we weren’t trying to claim otherwise. The claim was that this tends to be small in comparison to the economic cost of for example disease in children accruing the same number of DALYs.