The $6.9 Million Man (and Woman)
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, July 10, 2008 | 05:40 PM
By Tom Shoop | Thursday, July 10, 2008 | 05:40 PM
The price of everything from gas to groceries may be on the rise, but the value of a human life is dropping, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Associated Press reports that as of May, the agency reckons that "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million, down almost $1 million from five years ago.
Agencies set a value on life -- based on what people are willing to pay to avoid certain risks and how much extra employers pay their workers to take on additional risks -- in order to calculate the costs and benefits of regulations. EPA says it adjusted the figure it uses based on updated economic studies. But some environmentalists say the Bush administration is fudging on the value of life to tilt the cost-benefit figures in the direction of not implementing tougher regulations.
EPA still places the highest value on life of any federal agency.
Comments
Well, where's my money?
Just about to Retire | Tuesday, July 15, 2008 | 05:19 PM
Well at least there is some attempt to put a uniform system in place. Regardless of the actual numbers, they will always be controversial.
The way that this all started, was back in 80's someone looked at a number of recent EPA regulations. The esitmated cost and the estimated number of lives saved, gave a cost per life. The numbers varied all over the place, from a low of about $1 M to over $10M, but with an average and cluster in the $5M area. Of course this was after the fact and both costs and lives saved were primarily number crunching exercises. Costs and lives saved are still number crunching exercises. We can only hope that we'vew gotten better at it. But the values that SHOULD be used are not strictly scientific questions.
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Government Executive Editor Tom Shoop takes a look at news and events affecting the federal bureaucracy, from the perspective of a longtime observer of government.
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