Skip to main content
Menu

Main navigation

  • About
    • Annual Reports
    • Leadership
    • Jobs
    • Student Programs
    • Media Information
    • Store
    • Contact
    LOADING...
  • Experts
    • Policy Scholars
    • Adjunct Scholars
    • Fellows
  • Events
    • Upcoming
    • Past
    • Event FAQs
    • Sphere Summit
    LOADING...
  • Publications
    • Studies
    • Commentary
    • Books
    • Reviews and Journals
    • Public Filings
    LOADING...
  • Blog
  • Donate
    • Sponsorship Benefits
    • Ways to Give
    • Planned Giving

Issues

  • Constitution and Law
    • Constitutional Law
    • Criminal Justice
    • Free Speech and Civil Liberties
  • Economics
    • Banking and Finance
    • Monetary Policy
    • Regulation
    • Tax and Budget Policy
  • Politics and Society
    • Education
    • Government and Politics
    • Health Care
    • Poverty and Social Welfare
    • Technology and Privacy
  • International
    • Defense and Foreign Policy
    • Global Freedom
    • Immigration
    • Trade Policy
Live Now

Blog


  • Blog Home
  • RSS

Email Signup

Sign up to have blog posts delivered straight to your inbox!

Topics
  • Banking and Finance
  • Constitutional Law
  • Criminal Justice
  • Defense and Foreign Policy
  • Education
  • Free Speech and Civil Liberties
  • Global Freedom
  • Government and Politics
  • Health Care
  • Immigration
  • Monetary Policy
  • Poverty and Social Welfare
  • Regulation
  • Tax and Budget Policy
  • Technology and Privacy
  • Trade Policy
Archives
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • Show More
July 11, 2008 12:37PM

EPA: Your Life is Worthless

By Jim Harper

SHARE

Splashed across the front pages today — well, at least one paper I saw — are headlines about the EPA slashing the value of life revising the value of a statistical life downward. This is highly newsworthy, but only because most people haven't been paying attention to economics or regulatory policy. (One can't really blame them . . .)

There are two things that make the news juicy: the fact that regulators are placing a value on life, and the fact that they're revising the value down.

Most people don't know that you can put a value on human life. Most people don't know that they put a value on their own lives all day every day. The slogans that we grow up with - "life is precious" - dominate their thinking. Our parents value our lives very highly and teach us to at least talk about the value of life in exaggerated terms.

This kind of talk and thinking isn't universal, of course — in our culture and others, sacrificing one's life for a high ideal is well regarded, as is sacrificing one's life for science, or for fun. That said, being cavalier or anti-life is generally not a good idea. No, there's some balance between prizing life and prizing fun, the greater good, ideology, religion, or what-have-you.

We do strike those balances every day. When we go to cross the street, we make judgments about the threat to our life and health from oncoming cars and decide whether to cross in the middle of the block, at a cross-walk, at a controlled intersection, or at a pedestrian footbridge. Most of us have had occassion at least once to think about crossing a freeway — and we haven't done it.

All this is because we are weighing the value of getting to the other side against the risk of costing ourselves our own lives. To articulate this balancing, what economists are doing is using a dollar value to measure the relative importance of life versus other things.

Think about the alternative: What if you had no way of balancing the value of life against the value of going to the movie theater? People might step into six lanes of onrushing traffic just to be first in the popcorn line. People might cower at the side of an empty two-lane road, passing up a small-town-theater showing of Fun in Acacpulco for fear of setting foot on macadam where a car tire has been. You've got to have some measure of the value of life, and you've got to use it.

Now, what about the second issue: revising the value of life downward? Under the "life is precious" presumption, that sounds horrible. It should always be revised upwards, right? Well, guess what. If you do, you're gonna miss the movie.

If you value life too highly, you will take steps to protect life and health that undermine the value of living. Why is life "precious"? Some say for it's own sake. But most people believe it's because of the wonderful range of experiences, adventures, tastes, emotions, and relationships we get to enjoy in life. The freedom. If we give up too much of that, focusing strictly on keeping our hearts pumping and air flowing in and out of the lungs, we've lost track of the reason for living. Simply maintaining bodies in a state of sentience is not what it's all about. So regulatory policy must do what we must do as individuals: strike a balance between life and living. Fall too far out of balance in either direction and you're either prematurely dead or living a life without meaning.

I know nothing about the methodology that the EPA is using to calculate the value of a human life. They came up with $6.9 million. Frankly, that sounds fair to me. (So would $10.2 million, though, or $5.5 million.) There is one problem with it, though. It's not the value I place on my life. It's their estimate of the average value that the average American places on his life. Coming up with a single number is a gross collective judgment about how much risk and how much safety each of us should have. It's incredibly dehumanizing to be lumped together with everyone else this way.

If you disagree with placing a dollar value on human life, well, you disagree with the idea of describing human action in a standardized way. You might as well disagree with giving names to colors.

But if you disagree with the value the EPA is placing on human life, there might be something to that. The regulatory process makes a huge collective judgments about the value of life, lumping us all together into one big average.

We should be as free as possible to make our own judgments about risk and the value of life. It's difficult with things like air pollution, but even those kinds of risks can often be controlled through individual judgments.

Whatever the case, get over your concerns about placing a dollar value on human life. And revising the value down? — that's a good thing. It means that we get to have more freedom and more fun!

Related Tags
Regulation, Tax and Budget Policy

Stay Connected to Cato

Sign up for the newsletter to receive periodic updates on Cato research, events, and publications.

View All Newsletters

1000 Massachusetts Ave, NW,
Washington, DC 20001-5403
(202) 842-0200
Contact Us
Privacy

Footer 1

  • About
    • Annual Reports
    • Leadership
    • Jobs
    • Student Programs
    • Media Information
    • Store
    • Contact

Footer 2

  • Experts
    • Policy Scholars
    • Adjunct Scholars
    • Fellows
  • Events
    • Upcoming
    • Past
    • Event FAQs
    • Sphere Summit

Footer 3

  • Publications
    • Books
    • Cato Journal
    • Regulation
    • Cato Policy Report
    • Cato Supreme Court Review
    • Cato’s Letter
    • Human Freedom Index
    • Economic Freedom of the World
    • Cato Handbook for Policymakers

Footer 4

  • Blog
  • Donate
    • Sponsorship Benefits
    • Ways to Give
    • Planned Giving
Also from Cato Institute:
Libertarianism.org
|
Humanprogress.org
|
Downsizinggovernment.org