Social costs

Equivalent Social Cost index Fatal accident rate (discussed in Section 18.5) ... 

Prices can fail to reflect true social cost for reasons other than externalities. Factors such as taxes, subsidies, tiiotiopolies, and fear of expropriation also can cause prices to diverge from marginal social cost. 

Second, intervention is justified because social costs may exceed private costs as well as private benefits. For example, when an individual chooses to take a personal automobile to work instead of mass transit, the individual driver receives the short-term benefits (privacy, comfort, speed, and convenience) while the negative social costs (greater air pollution, highway construction, traffic jams, and resource depletion) are shared by all. Intei vention usually is an attempt to lower the social costs. Flowever, the prob-... 

Hohmeyer, O. (1988). Social Costs of Energy Consumption External Effects of Electricity Generation in the federal Republic of Germany. Berlin Springer-Verlag. 

The above analysis is somewhat oversimplified and is considered an Incomplete assessment of the existing environmental problems caused by pesticides. Again, it must be emphasized that there is no completely satisfactory way to summarize all of the environmental and social costs in terms of dollars. For example, it is impossible, if not unethical to place a monetary value on human lives either lost, diseased, or disabled because of pesticide use. It is equally difficult to place a monetary value on total wildlife losses. Good health, and Indeed life itself have no price tag. 

Clearly, the 8 billion attributed to environmental and social costs represents only a small portion of the actual costs. A more complete accounting of the Indirect costs also should include costs like the unrecorded losses of fish, wildlife, crops, and trees ... 

From this analysis it is clear that in addition to their benefits, the use of pesticides in food production not only causes serious public health problems but also considerable damage to vital agricultural and natural ecosystems in the United States and world. A conservative estimate suggests that the environmental and social costs of pesticide use in the United States total about 4 billion each year. Worldwide the yearly environmental and public health costs are probably at least 100 billion. This is several times the 18 bllllon/yr spent on pesticides in the world. 

Need of sustainable management (ecological, economical, and social). There is a need for sustainable water resources management, but this can also be the most difficult to recognize. Management should be respectful with the environment, but not at any economical and social prize economically affordable, but not at any environmental and social cost and finally, must seek for social equity (personal and territorial), but not at any environmental and economical cost. Besides there is an interrelation among the different problems related to IWRM, each problem can have different causes and each solution may affect to different problems. 

Some of the economic and social costs related to major environmental issnes are discussed in the following sections. 

Data from the ECA were used in an analysis of the social costs of anxiety disorders (Leon et al, 1995). Financial dependence was high among anxious individuals, particularly those with panic disorders (unemployment among men was 60%). Chronic... 

Edlund MJ, Swann AC (1987). The economic and social costs of panic disorder. Hosp Community Psychiatry 5, 1277—9. 

Leon AC, Portera L, Weissman MM (1995). The social costs of anxiety disorders. Br J Psychiatry 166 (suppl. 27), 19-22. 

The evidence base for clinical decisions based on cost-effectiveness for the affective disorders is less clear than for schizophrenia. In bipolar disorder the primary effectiveness of the mainstay treatments, lithium and anticonvulsant pharmacotherapy, is undergoing considerable revision (Bowden et al, 2000). Until this is clarified, cost-effectiveness studies are probably premature. Nevertheless the cost burden in bipolar disorder is qualitatively similar to that in schizophrenia, with in-patient costs being the primary burden and associated social costs in treated patients. The drug costs are even less than those for schizophrenia. In Chapter 5 John Cookson suggests there is little economic evidence to drive prescribing decisions. The in-patient burden does not seem to have altered with the introduction of lithium. The only drug-related study (Keck et al, 1996) showed an obvious difference in treatment costs only when lithium was compared with sodium valproate. Since these are both cheap drugs this is unlikely to influence clinical decisions. The main question is what impact... 

Difficulties will arise in expressing functions that depend on value judgements for example, the social benefits and the social costs that arise from pollution. 

Display of risk levels for various subpopulations under various applications of technological or regulatory control of releases into the environment in order to relate social costs to risk reduction. 

The problem of the choice of environmental policy instruments has been an issue since Pigou [2] analyzed the need for state intervention when private costs diverge from social costs and suggested that the solution would be to internalize the externalities through taxation.1 Coase [4] criticized the proposed state intervention and affirmed that there is no reason to suppose that governmental regulation is called for simply because the problem is not very well handled by the market or the firm. 

Following an EAL approach, traditionally regulatory systems originate from the presence of market failure in our specific case, the environment appears as a "public good" that may not be appropriated and has no market price the damage to the environment is a case of "externality," in that it is fully or partly a social cost that is not internalized into the accounts of the parties causing it.2 So the comparison of different instruments can consider how they may play a role in correcting malfunction and subsequent inefficiencies [7]. 

Social costs reflect in this example all costs occurring from the provision and the use of transport infrastructure, such as wear and tear costs of infrastructure, capital costs, congestion costs, accident costs and environmental damage costs. Some of these costs are already indirectly included in the private costs through taxes and charges, while others are not. In the context of environmental economics, private and social aspects are of importance. Mainly since it is often the case that environmental degradation is a social cost caused by private activities. Hence, the distinction between private and social is as presented above another impact of costs not being properly internalized in prices. 

Environmentally Induced Illnesses Ethics, Risk Assessment and Human Rights. Thomas Kerns, Jefferson, NC McFarland, [in press]. Addresses the ethics of managing environmental health and ubiquitous toxicants (such as solvents, pesticides and artificial fragrances). The work includes recent medical literature on chronic health effects from exposure to toxicants and the social costs of these disorders relevant historic and human rights documents recommendations for public policy and legislation and primary obstacles faced by public health advocates. 

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