Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/236212 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 14181
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced countries to make difficult ethical choices, e.g., how to balance public health and socioeconomic activity and whom to prioritize in allocating vaccines or other scarce medical resources. We discuss the implications of benefit-cost analysis, utilitarianism, and prioritarianism in evaluating COVID-19-related policies. The relative regressivity of COVID-19 burdens and control policy costs determines whether increased sensitivity to distribution supports more or less aggressive control policies. Utilitarianism and prioritarianism, in that order, increasingly favor income redistribution mechanisms compared with benefit-cost analysis. The concern for the worse-off implies that prioritarianism is more likely than utilitarianism or benefit-cost analysis to target young and socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals in the allocation of scarce vaccine doses.
Subjects: 
prioritarianism
benefit-cost analysis
utilitarianism
COVID-19
vaccine allocation
lockdown
control policies
JEL: 
I1
I3
D6
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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