DALYS - EFFICIENCY VERSUS EQUITY

The Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) is a newly-developed indicato r of iii-health which provided the technical foundation for the World Bank's (1993) World Development Report: Investing in Health. In this p aper we expose some of the value choices embodied in the DALY-those re lating to disability weights, age-weighting, and discounting. We ident ify the equity consequences of using the efficiency criterion of aggre gate DALY-minimization as a tool for health-sector planning. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.