Valuing Particular as Opposed to Statistical Life

Abstract

There is a remarkable consensus among those economists who have investigated the "value of life" that their analysis should be used only in relation to statistical death (the exposure of a number of people to small independent incremental risks of death) and not in relation to particular death (the death of a given, identified individual). This is so, at least for those economists who have adopted the "willingness to pay approach" and who have defined the value of avoiding one statistical death as the aggregate compensating variation for the corresponding small changes in individual risks. Thus, for example, Schelling (1968) writes:

It is not the worth of human life that I shall discuss, but of 'life-saving', of preventing death. And it is not a particular death but a statistical death. What is it worth to reduce the probability of death - the statistical frequency of death - within some identifiable group of people none of whom expects to die except eventually?