The Measure of Man

A life considered in a courtroom has a different value than one considered in an FDA meeting room. The courts are concerned with a particular person who has already suffered death or injury, while federal agencies are concerned with an unknown group of people who may suffer or die in the future.

The court wants to determine the amount of liability incurred by the defendant. The compensation has an economic and a non-economic part. The economic portion covers the income lost if the person is still alive; otherwise, it covers the money the person would have provided to their heirs. People in this situation are typically valued by the amount people in their demographic would earn. This approach assigns little value to children or people over age 70, since they have no income.

There is a second punitive portion of a court award as well. This can be used to compensate the family for their grief. It can also be used to compensate an injured, but living, person for the "pain and suffering" of their injury. There have been some studies, primarily aimed at evaluating medical care, which attempt to assign a dollar value to health. Finally, the non-economic portion can be used to compensate the lawyers involved in the case.

Public policy depends upon a different valuation. People setting policy are trying to weigh the cost of regulations against the corresponding reduction in risk. Law requires the executive branch perform cost/benefit analyses to justify new regulations. These analyses depend upon the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL). One thought experiment (Reference 285), explains VSL as follows: Assume you are in a stadium with 10,000 people, and one randomly selected person attending the event will die. Ask everyone how much they would be willing to pay to save that person. The total amount spent by the 10,000 people is the value of one statistical life.

There are a number of methods for determining these valuations. The value of a statistical life is often found by looking at the difference in pay rates for jobs with similar qualifications and duties but varying risks of death. Surveys seem to be another source of information about how much a life is worth, particularly for looking at how much life of a given quality is worth.

I will look further at the validity of these methods of valuing human life, but we should also consider whether these approaches really capture how we want to measure the worth of a person.