Talk:Value of life/Archives/2013

Value of Life
POV post that I wrote on K5 that I think might have some ideas to put into this article:

First of all resources are not unlimited. Say someone developed a wonderful new drug that gave everyone who took it 5 more years of life. The catch, producing this drug cost one billion dollars per person who took it. Should everyone get this drug? Well, the cost would greatly exceed the ability of most individuals to pay for it and all governments (at least if the government is paying for everyone). The other problem with this miracle drug is that it is more expensive than other ways to save a comparable number of years of life. So it would be foolish to spend the money on the miracle drug. What cost benefit analysis can do is give a dollars per life saved. Then, if your goal is to save the most lives you start with the cheapest and keep going until you run out of money. Any other method of selecting projects to pay money on will result in fewer lives saved.

For example, say you have a one million dollar budget for saving lives. You can either put in 10 traffic lights that will save 10 lives total over their lifetime, or you can put in one arsenic filter in the city water supply that will save 1 life by preventing cancer. Unless you think that traffic deaths are particulary nice and cancer deaths are 10 times as bad, the best plan would be to put in the traffic lights and not the arsenic filter, because you save 9 more lives.

Going further, you can look at a country and see where the country stops paying for methods of saving lives. In the United States, this is generally around six million dollars per life saved. In India, this is closer to one hundred thousand dollars per life saved. Does this mean life is cheaper in India? Not really, it just means that India is poorer than the United States, so the budget for saving lives runs out sooner. Would it be more intellegent for India to increase the amount that the government spends on saving lives? No, because pretty soon you end up doing irrational things like taking money that would be spent on say food, to pay for say, a new traffic light, and then you end up killing more people that way. So, in short, different countries will have different dividing lines on where to stop spending money to save lives.

So, lets say that you want to do a cost benefit analysis to decide on one government program to save lives. Do you need to compare this program to every other government program to see if it has a higher dollars per life saved than any of the others it might displace? Nope, you just look up in a table that the government has and you see that the value per life saved is five million dollars. Then you calculate the cost of the program and the number of lives saved and divide. If it greater than five million than the program is not worth it at the present time. If it is less then five million per life then it is worth it at the present time. Then you report back accordingly.

If you think it is immoral to do it that way, then please propose a better solution for determining which programs are beneficial and which are not. You will likely propose something that ends up killing more people than the `immoral' method of comparing lives saved to dollars spent (or for that matter, comparing lives saved to a fixed amount that has been carefully determined).

Of course, there are some things that economics has a very hard time trying to determine a dollar value for. A big one is existance value, i.e. how much should we spend just to make sure that something exists (like how valuable is it to you that there exist whales in the ocean). A good cost benefit analysis should give details on how every item that is not monetary in nature has been converted to money. Then, if you have a different opionion, you can come along and recalculate using your own method of valuation. Economists have spent quite a bit of time trying to deal with these questions. Those who do not understand economics generally reinvent it poorly.

I think parts of it might be useful for this article. Possibly as a new section on why economists use a dollar value sometimes. Jrincayc 17:50, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Is there any list of "entries the world does not need"? Get-back-world-respect 12:53, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I agree with the first poster alot of stuff but his believe in the absoluteness of cost benfit analysis (CBA) is entirely unfounded. You cannot value a human life in monetary terms it is absolutly wrong from an economic and ethical stand point. No amount of money is useful to you when your dead (admitly alturism comes into it but thats another point entirely) so if your going to die you might as well give up everything you have for some time alive (assuming your life is worth living in your opinion.) Ethicaly monetrising an irreverisble action is unsound. If the giant panda dies out you can calculate the cost that it infilcits on society in lost happiness. However the panda is never coming back its value is hence the value to future generations is unknown, so this has to be taken into account.

As for the assertion that there is nothing better than CBA analysis, what about risk-risk analysis? This is where the risk of performing the task is balanced against the lowering of risk that would happen if the task was carried out. Based on this alot of regulations are unsound as they cause amny more deaths than they would otherwise save.

things that possibly should be included are basic stuff like the fact that your not talking about lives in most of these things but extremely small probabilities for many individual people. These probabilities have to be lower than (according the british hse 1 in 10000).

Talk about value of statistical life instead of value of life and the different methods: human capital, willingness to pay and valuing life in life years. Discussion of how this effect stuff and the valuation.

Something about round the world, as the discussion does vary Britian and the USA realy start CBA and valuing lifes but how its developed might be appropriate bit might turn the entire entryy into one big long essay.

Something on discounting not being so easy with human lifes defintily and that for most the manner of death matters (eu double the value of life in the case of cancer).

Abortion
I think the abortion paragraph is not NPOV. To me, it comes out clearly on the "right to choose" side. In fact, why even bring it up, except under the point of view that there should be a right to choose? Why not say that it's a market failure that there's no market value for the right to shoot your noisy neighbors? I would have a hard time making the paragraph NPOV. Furthermore, I'm not at all convinced that the paragraph adds that much insight to the Value of Life topic. So, I'm deleting it. Derekt75 02:22, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Value of a Statistical Life
Public policy analysts often use a concept called the value of a statistical life (VSL) in cost benefit analysis.

The point of this value is simple. Suppose a new policy is being consider that will save an average of 100 lives per year. Supose the population is one million. So the policy will save one life out of every 10,000 people. Now supose the policy will cost $50 million to implement, or equivalent to $50 per capita. Is this a good policy or a bad policy? That depends on whether the average person is willing to spend $50 to reduce their chance of death by one in 10,000. If the average person thinks that is a good investment, then they'd be willing to have their taxes go up to pay for the new policy. If the average person thinks the cost is not worth the benefits, then it is a bad policy. Putting this another way, the policy will cost $50 million and will save 100 lives. So each life saved will cost approximately half a million dollars. Is spending half a million dollars, per life saved, a good investment? Does society as a whole, think that this is a worthwile use of tax dollars?

Rather than have to conduct a survey every time the government wants to implement a new policy to see if people think the costs outweigh the benefits or not, economists have developed a measure called the value of statistical life (VSL) which measure the break even point at which society as a whole is willing to pay in order to reduce the statistical risk of death. This way, policy makers can figure out how much a policy will cost, for each life that is saved, and compare this with the VSL. For example, if VSL is estimated to by $4 million, then it means a policy which costs less than $4 million for each saved life, produces net social benefits, while a policy that would cost more than $4 million for each life saved represents a net social loss. Society would have been better off (on average) spending that money some other way.

VSL can be estimated by asking people their willingess to pay for marginal reductions in their chance of death. For example: "would you be willing to pay $10 per month for a new drug that would reduce your chance of having a fatal heart attack by one in 2000?" Responses are then averaged across society. Alternatively, it can be estimated by looking at the day to day decisions people make in their lives, that indicate a willingness to trade increased personal risk for money. Eg, do people work a job that is more dangerous because it pays better? or do people spend more money on the car with a higher safety rating?

In either case, the VSL is based on the AVERAGE willingness of citizens to pay for marginal safety improvements. It is in no way based on the "cost" to government of saving lives. It is not, as stated in the article "the cost of reducing the (average) number of deaths by one". In fact, it is the exact opposite. It is the BENEFIT of reducing the average number of deaths by one.

The article also makes statements like "it is also necessary to put a precise economic value on a given life". This is not what VSL is about at all. VSL is not about saying "Fred Smith's life is worth exactly $3,215,789" VSL is a measurement that realy only has meaning when applied to aggregate policy impacts. Not on a person by person basis. It used in cost benefit analysis to assess the benefits of saving lives. Policy makers may know that a given policy will save about 100 lives per year. But they have no way of knowing which 100 people those lives will be. Hence, they want a measure of the average value (benefit) of saving a life. The value of one specific life(the value Fred's life compared to Bill's life) is not relevant.

The "value of life" that is discussed in the accompanying artilce has nothing to do with VSL. A large number of economist (most/all economists?) would generaly favour a VSL approach to measuring/defining the value of life, rather than the approach taken in the article. From a social welfare analysis perspective, VSL or a similar willingness to pay measurement are certainly more valid for use in a cost-benefit analysis then the measure discussed in this article.

The way the article currently stands, it implies that the standard economic approach to measuring the value of life is to simply see how much it costs to save a life. This is definetly not the case. I think the article should be overhauled.

Failing that, a new article on VSL should be created, and this one should be linked to it.

As far as I could tell, there currently is no article on VSL.

P.S. In cost benefit analysis, economists often use measures of the Value of a Life Year (VOLY), a Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY), or similar measure. These concepts are distinct from a VSL, but are quite similar. The position of the article is equally inconsistent with a VOLY or QALY approach to measuring the value of life.

Northern Bear 12:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Historical example?
Wouldn't it be great to include examples from real-life? I clearly recall after 9/11 (Twin Tower attack), every family that lost a loved one got compensated by the Federal government. There was a whole ordeal on how each individual should be compensated. There were discussion about using insurance valuing, which would give key person, like CEO, higher amount. I believe they ended up give everyone a set amount. --Voidvector 12:00, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually they settled with something different, here is the actual article: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. It is based on what "each victim would have earned in a full lifetime". --Voidvector 12:08, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 04:31, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

"Value of Life" vs Human Rights
According to ethical principles of Humanism and Human Rights, all human lives are equal. According to the "Value of Life" ideology, the value of a human life is directly correlated with that person's (real or prospective) income and wealth, because obviously a rich person is able and willing to spend more money on his/her survival. Utilitarianists have to be upfront about this implication of their ideology which is IMHO antidemocratic and inhumane.--87.162.16.200 (talk) 12:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The idea behind VSL is to simply recognize the fact that people face tradeoffs in health and safety decisions just like they do everywhere else. For example, many people die every year in car crashes while attempting to make left turns. It's usually possible to greatly reduce your risk of a potentially fatal accident by making three rights instead of a left, and the only costs are a bit of extra time and fuel. However, very few people will do this. Most value the time they would lose more than the increased safety they would gain.

Also, governments have several different ways they can use their limited resources to increase the health and safety of the population. If a given dollar saves more lives when spent one way than another, the government should use their budget as efficiently as possible so as not to waste money that could have gone towards saving lives. The best way to do that would be to spend where the marginal cost of each life saved by each method is equal. To ignore such an analysis and waste lives would be far more inhumane 168.16.132.59 (talk) 10:05, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Actual examples?
It seems somewhat redundant to have all this information on the 'value of life' without any specific examples or discussion of its applications. After reading the first few paragraphs of the article I was looking forward to some concrete examples and was somewhat surprised to find there were none. Is there any rationale behind not having some figures in this article, because I think it would add alot of value to readers (myself included). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.0.57.154 (talk) 04:07, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Consumer Unit ? Really ???
of all the disphemism that can be used to describe the life of a 18 year old person, a "consumer unit" has to be the most offensive, insulting, devaluing and dehumanising term imaginable, I wonder what industry uses this on a regular basis ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.212.7.249 (talk) 03:45, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Apart from being awkwardly dehumanising, it also seems to be rather wrong. In economics, a Consumer unit seems to refer to one single-earner household or a nuclear family. This article seems to use it as a synonym for "person". This should be corrected... Marcika (talk) 22:22, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * These sections may also violate the "no original research" rule. They either need a bunch of citations (and should probably be shortened) or removed. --Woood (talk) 00:05, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Putting it all together
This quote from the "putting it all together" section, "...equation gives us $195,9467.00 =..." does not make sense. 195, 9467.00 is not a number. I would fix the problem, but I do not know what it should actually be stating? Andrew Colvin (talk) 00:35, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Scope
I'm so tempted to just move this to Life value (economics). Is it necessary that this article be so dominated from a cost-benefit approach to life, to the exclusion of sociology, theology, anthropology, etc., such that it might be necessary to contain its conceptualization per the nominal distinctions? -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 22:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

No, it's not. Feel free to add sections describing how sociology, theology, and anthropology treat the issue. Removing information from one field to match the lack of information from other fields seems inherently backwards to me.

Bakunin82 (talk) 19:53, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Marxist approach
Far too much of this article is devoted to a, presumably controversial, Marxist approach. I've put all that stuff into a section marked OR; I suggest it is shortened 93.96.236.8 (talk) 15:17, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I strongly agree. Sections that claim to use mathematical models do nothing of the sort (unless we count adding up dollar amounts as a model). Further, there is not one single citation in any of this; not for the data or the theory. As a matter of fact, it's not clear to me that there is anything necessarily 'Marxist' about this, since the act of using what people spend (market prices) to value something seems pretty standard to me. Can the author address these issues? If not, I plan to remove.

Bakunin82 (talk) 19:50, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

After reading this section again, I am just deleting it. These are the issues:

1) The willingness to pay discussion is not correct. Willingness to pay takes into account someone's income.

2) From the article: "Additionally, this method is not applicable when estimating anyone under 18, because clearly they do not meet the criteria required by the "willingness to pay" model." Willingness to pay is not a model.  It is the amount someone would pay to avoid some event.  Is the author claiming that people under the age of 18 wouldn't pay money to avoid death?

3) "The Marxist model allows us to construct a defensible estimate of the costs associated with producing the CU..." The cost of "producing a CU" (how about raising a person to maturity?) is NOT the value of their life.  What parent, when asked how much they value their kids, would simply calculate how much they spent on them in their lifetimes?

4)The 'practical example' is rediculous. Dividing lifetime income (no discounting?) by number of people in households in no way determines the value of someone's life.

5) The section: 'A practical application of the Marx-Zilberman equation' contains no equations. This is cause for concern ...

I could go on, but I feel like the point is made.

Bakunin82 (talk) 20:12, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Labor Market Hedonics
Most of the economics literature does not use questionnaires. Labor hedonics, where the actual change in wages associated with marginal changes in the risk of death, are the most common and date back to a paper by Thaler and Rosen in 1975. I think a large portion of this article should discuss this as it represents the bulk of research in this area. It is the basis for the VSL used by the United States government when evaluating programs. For example, the 2001 meta analysis by Janusz R. Mrozek and Laura O. Taylor was used to update the official government VSL and is used by the EPA when performing cost-benefit analyses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bakunin82 (talk • contribs) 17:33, 3 October 2011 (UTC)