Cancer Risk Messages: Public Health and Economic Welfare

TL;DR

This paper examines how public health messages about cancer risk influence economic welfare, proposing a method to evaluate the accuracy of risk statements and their impact on markets and government decisions.

Contribution

It introduces a contingency table approach to assess the accuracy of cancer risk messages and models bureaucratic objectives related to risk reporting.

Findings

Risk message accuracy affects economic welfare.

A contingency table method for evaluating risk statements.

Framework for bureaucratic objectives in risk communication.

Abstract

Statements for public health purposes such as "1 in 2 will get cancer by age 85" have appeared in public spaces. The meaning drawn from such statements affects economic welfare, not just public health. Both markets and government use risk information on all kinds of risks, useful information can, in turn, improve economic welfare, however inaccuracy can lower it. We adapt the contingency table approach so that a quoted risk is cross-classified with the states of nature. We show that bureaucratic objective functions regarding the accuracy of a reported cancer risk can then be stated.