Equity in health: the importance of different health streams

This paper develops a conceptual framework in which preferences about the distribution of future health gains depend on differences in four ‘health streams’. These are as follows: (1) the amount of health to be gained; (2) the no-treatment profiles; (3) the amount of health experienced thus far; and (4) the amount of health gained previously as a result of public health interventions. This classification puts the well-established concerns for severity (stream 2) and age weights (stream 3) into a more complete analytical framework. Stream 4 has not been discussed to date and the paper suggests some moral arguments about the distributive relevance of this stream of health.