Paying people to make healthy choices is a promising response to a genuine social problem. Many people engage in behaviours that are not only destructive of their health but also impose significant financial burdens on themselves and their societies. Paying people to make healthy choices can be more effective than the mere provision of information, while also being more efficient and ethical than outright prohibitions of unhealthy behaviour. An enormous range of empirical research confirms this basic insight. However, when it comes to the success of any given programme, the devil is in the details. Health incentive programmes need to be carefully designed and evaluated to ensure that they are indeed effective, efficient and ethical. Moreover, special attention must be paid to concerns about equity, unjustified paternalism, the effects on character and perverse incentives that can generate unintended consequences.
Paying People to Make Healthy Choices
Paying People to Make Healthy Choices
Recent Publications
- “Equal Opportunity, Not Reparations” in the Handbook of Equality of Opportunity (2024)
- “A Bayesian Solution to Hallsson’s Puzzle”
- Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests, 2nd Edition
- “Optimizing political influence: a jury theorem with dynamic competence and dependence”
- Why not anarchism?
Recent News
- Advocacy group concerned pay-for-plasma clinics expanding to Ontario will hurt voluntary donations
- Jason Brennan and Hélène Landemore, Debating Democracy (University of Zurich’s UBS Center, 2024)
- Jason Brennan “Everything Wrong with Democracy” on the Alex O’Connor Podcast (January 28, 2024)
- On the affirmative action ruling, the Supreme Court got it half right
- Is the effective altruism movement in trouble?