In a tragic sort of way, inferior prenatal care could actually boost average life expectancy while lowering health care costs. Adequedate prenatal care may reduce the incidence of miscarriage, especially in the second half of pregnancy. Had my wife's perinatologist not detected her dilating cervix in the 22nd week of pregnancy, we would probably have lost our daughter. And she would have been a miscarriage statistic, not an infant mortality statistic.SourceThis highlights the need to specify very carefully the sort of indicators that are targeted, whether under the current regime, or using Social Policy Bonds.
11 October 2005
Numerical indicators
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3 comments:
That's a really interesting way of looking at thing R. Things are not always as they seem... this is nt really related ...but the post reminds me of this - I read on the Dom Post (?) paper some American economist believes that in allowing abortion to be more common, crime rates can reduce....
Apply that to social bonds... If the bond was to reduce crime rates, would paying for/promoting/providing abortions be a legimate means to achieve that?
Have you given much consideration as to the means by which bond holders would use to achieve the goal? Are there any particular areas which society's values and morals would conflict with achieving certain goals?
Meh, I've had too much caffiene. I doubt this makes any sense. Hope ya well dude!
Jimmy! How are you doing? Yes, this is the problem with fixing on one thing: you have to be very careful about the things that aren't specified. It's not a problem unique to Social Policy Bonds: it applies to all policymaking above say village level. At that sort of level, then the things that matter don't have to be anticipated or specified in advance; still less do they have to be quantified. It's at higher levels of aggregation that unwritten, informal behaviours and customs have to be formalised and (sometimes) explicitly anticipated.
As for abortion and crime: first, the argument that abortion reduced crime figures in the US is refuted (to my satisfaction anyway) here. But assuming that the relationship holds: well you could have a bond issue targeting crime that carried provisos such that the bonds shall not be redeemed if the abortion rate increases to a certain level. More generally, bond issues could carry provisos that stipulate they will not be redeemed if certain moral or legal behaviours are contravened. Basically it's up to the bond issuers, remembering that for many negative behaviours there are existing legal sanctions in place anyway. This applies whether the bond issuers are government bodies or private individuals.
R, that article truly lays waste to that theory! sadly now though, the theory will probably stick around for ever like an urban myth. JJ
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