discount: Discount health impacts

In healthiar: Quantifying and Monetizing Health Impacts Attributable to Exposure

Discount health impacts

Description

This function calculates discounted health impacts (without valuation).

Usage

discount(
  output_attribute = NULL,
  impact = NULL,
  discount_rate = NULL,
  n_years = NULL,
  discount_shape = NULL
)

Arguments

output_attribute	List produced by healthiar::attribute_health(), healthiar::attribute_lifetable() or healthiar::compare() as results.
impact	Numberic value referring to the health impacts to be monetized (without attribute function). If a Numberic vector is entered multiple assessments (by year) will be carried out. Be aware that the value for year 0 (current) must be entered, while n_years does not include the year 0. Thus, length of impact = n_years + 1.
discount_rate	Numeric value showing the discount rate for future years.
n_years	Numeric value referring to number of years in the future to be considered in the discounting and/or inflation. Be aware that the year 0 (without discounting/inflation, i.e. the present) is not be counted here. If a vector is entered in the argument impact, n_years does not need to be entered (length of impact = n_years + 1).
discount_shape	String referring to the assumed equation for the discount factor. By default: "exponential". Otherwise: "hyperbolic_harvey_1986" or "hyperbolic_mazur_1987".

Details

Methodology

This function applies a discount to attributable health impacts into the future.

One of the following three discount shapes can be selected:

• Exponential \insertCiteFrederick2002_jelhealthiar

• Hyperbolic as \insertCiteHarvey1986_ms;textualhealthiar

• Hyperbolic as \insertCiteMazur1987_book;textualhealthiar

Burden of disease studies may be interested in calculating + discounted health impacts over time, and these may also be used in economic evaluation models, where benefits are not monetized. For this specific purpose, this function is offered.

Detailed information about the methodology (including equations) is available in the package vignette. More specifically, see chapters:

• Monetization

Value

This function returns a list containing:

1) monetization_main (tibble) containing the main monetized results;

• monetized_impact (numeric column)

• discount_factor (numeric column) calculated based on the entered discount_rate

• And many more

2) monetization_detailed (list) containing detailed (and interim) results.

• results_by_year (tibble)

• health_raw (tibble) containing the monetized results for each for each combination of input uncertainty that were provided to the initial attribute_health() call

If the argument output_attribute was specified, then the two results elements are added to the existing output.

Author(s)

Alberto Castro & Axel Luyten

References

\insertAllCited

See Also

• Upstream: attribute_health, attribute_health

• Alternative: monetize

Examples

# Goal: discount attributable health impacts
results <- discount(
  impact = 20000,
  discount_shape = "exponential",
  discount_rate = 0.03,
  n_years = 20
)
results$monetization_main$monetized_impact

healthiar documentation built on March 12, 2026, 5:07 p.m.