Years of good life based on income and health: re-engineering cost-benefit analysis to examine policy impacts on wellbeing and distributive justice

In this paper, we propose a practical measure of individual wellbeing to facilitate the economic evaluation of public policies. We propose to evaluate policies in terms of years of good life gained, in a way that complements and generalises conventional cost-benefit analysis in terms of money. We aim to show how years of good life could be measured in practice by harnessing readily available data on three important elements of individual wellbeing: income, health-related quality of life, and longevity. We also aim to identify the main ethical assumptions needed to use this measure.