scholarly journals Underprotection of Unpredictable Statistical Lives Compared to Predictable Ones

Risk Analysis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 893-904 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Lipsitch ◽  
Nicholas G. Evans ◽  
Owen Cotton-Barratt
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Lives

scholarly journals Life-Cycle Consumption and the Age-Adjusted Value of Life

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J Kniesner ◽  
W. Kip Viscusi ◽  
James P Ziliak
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Value Of Life ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Accidental Death ◽  
Important Health ◽  
Job Safety ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Statistical Lives

AbstractOur research presents new evidence on the age pattern of the implicit value of life revealed from workers' differential wages and job safety pairings. Although aging reduces the number of years of life expectancy, aging can affect the value of life through an effect on planned life-cycle consumption. The elderly could, a priori, have the highest implicit value of life if there is a life-cycle plan to defer consumption until old age. We find that largely due to the age pattern of consumption, which is non-constant, the implicit value of life rises and falls over the lifetime in a way that the value for the elderly is higher than the average over all ages or for the young. There are important health policy implications of our empirical results. Because there may be age-specific benefits of programs to save statistical lives, instead of valuing the lives of the elderly at less than the young, health policymakers should more correctly value the lives of the elderly at as much as twice the young because of relatively greater consumption lost when accidental death occurs.

Discounting statistical lives

1990 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
John K. Horowitz ◽  
Richard T. Carson
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Lives

scholarly journals How Do Legislators Value Constituent’s (Statistical) Lives? COVID-19, Partisanship, and Value of a Statistical Life Analysis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelangelo Geovanny Landgrave
Keyword(s):  
State Legislators ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
P Value ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Statistical Life ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
Life Analysis ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Party Id ◽  
Statistical Lives

Value of statistical life (VSL) analysis is common place in policy circles to evaluate the effectiveness of policy. As I show using a novel survey experiment with United States' state legislators, actual use of VSL analysis faces several problems. Firstly, policy preferences are inelastic, unchanging, regardless of the cost. Secondly, policy preferences are determined in large by actors' party ID. This means that VSL analysis, in practice, will either encourage policies that are too risky to too risk adverse.

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