The results in the pivot tables above were all generated using a 3% discounting rate. This means that years of healthy life lost in the future are discounted by 3% per year.
Thus, for example, a death at age 50, with an average of 32 years of life expectancy, contributes 32 YLLs with zero discounting, but only 20 YLLs with 3% discounting. For YLD calculation, conditions which are of short duration (eg. the common cold) and therefore have most of their burden in the present, are relatively unaffected by discounting, but conditions with life-long disability will have lower burden when calculated with discounting.
A fuller explanation of the reasons for and the effects of discounting (and also age-weighting, which was not done in the South Australian study) can be found in the following paper: |
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