Background:

Socioeconomic status can affect health in childhood through many different pathways. Evidence on how households differ with regard to socioeconomic status and the degree to which this difference is associated with investment in child health is essential to the design of appropriate intervention strategies.

Aim:

Objectives: We use a contingent valuation (CV) study of childhood asthma to discuss a central issue in designing CV studies of chronic illness—the need for a detailed, realistic scenario that minimizes confounding factors—and show how to address this issue. We apply our methodology to estimate households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for reductions in asthma morbidity.