Worth of a human life

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Apart from ethical contexts, the value of a human life is a technical term from economics. In economics, processes have been developed that value the loss or extension of human life in monetary units in such a way that these monetary values ​​can be used for comparative economic decision-making. Such a comparison can take place, for example, as part of a cost-benefit analysis of variants of the security planning. The value of a statistical life (WSL) is also mentioned here.

Whether and to what extent the financial evaluation of human life is methodologically possible and politically or ethically permissible is a matter of controversy.

Basic problem in security planning

In security planning, there is often the problem of how much to spend on security measures. If a human life were valued with the amount of money “infinite”, one would have to spend “infinitely much” everywhere on security measures. Two different public-sector measures, which cost differently, but whose more expensive ones save more lives, could not be evaluated economically - or only to a very limited extent.

Calculation methods

Expenditure on fatal accident prevention

From a safety perspective, safety at work is particularly relevant. For example, it was investigated how much employers actually spend on average to prevent the work-related death of an employee. Corresponding studies come to very different values ​​depending on the context and country. For example, some studies put this value at around 10 million euros.

Compensatory wage differentials

A German study calculated 1.72 million euros for an employed man, 1.43 million euros for an employed woman and 1.22 million euros for a male worker. In the USA, the value of a human life in working life is calculated to be around 3–4 times higher than in Germany. Also for the USA, according to a study, the statistical value of the human life of a white worker is estimated at 15 million US dollars, more than twice that of a black worker at 7.2 million dollars.

The value of a life year lost (VLYL ) results from dividing the value of a statistical life (VSL ) by the average life expectancy.

Social science surveys

In a representative survey of 1002 Germans, when asked whether they would be willing to die a year earlier for a million euros, one in five answered “yes”. With increasing age, the willingness for this bartering decreased.

Ethical problems

The evaluation of human life on the basis of external preferences of the market arises primarily as a fundamental problem of utilitarian or other consequentialist ethics that do not attach any intrinsic value to life. The monetary evaluability of a human life, on the other hand, is contested by theoretical positions that assert the incommensurability of values . Here, for example, philosophers in the successor of Immanuel Kant refer to the concept of human dignity , which should exclude a financial evaluation of people with a price . As an alternative to the cost-benefit analysis, in cases where it is explicitly about saving human lives, especially in the health sector, the assessment in cost-effectiveness analyzes comes into question. These answer the question of how as many human lives as possible can be saved with the resources available, but avoid comparing saving human lives with other welfare-increasing policy goals in monetary terms. In the EU, lives are z. B. is not assessed in monetary terms, but rather different measures are compared with regard to their effectiveness for the statistical extension of the life span of the population (e.g. in QALYs or DALYs ), whereby ethical problems can also arise here.

Another point of criticism is the possibility of group-specific discrimination on the basis of different social willingness to pay , at least according to the human capital approach . It is argued that in cost-benefit analyzes, which, according to welfare economic theory, serve as the basis for political or administrative decisions, the value of life should be assessed as individually as possible. Depending on the study design, it could follow from this that the extension of the life of a fair-skinned man through a state measure has a greater overall social value than that of a dark-skinned woman.

See also

literature

  • James I. Brannon, What is a Life Worth ?, Regulation (2004)
  • Hannes Spengler, compensatory wage differentials and the value of a statistical life in Germany, journal for labor market research
  • Jochen Fehling (2009), The Ethics of the Value of a Statistical Life: The Role of Individual Risk Competence for the Legitimacy of the VSL. Rainer Hampp: Munich, Mering. ISBN 978-3-86618-428-2
  • Nicholas Gregory Mankiw (2001): Grundzüge der Volkswirtschaftslehre, pp. 253f.
  • Merten, Carsten (2007): The evaluation of human life in liability law. Economic analysis of law. Law and Economics, Volume 8. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Vienna. ISBN 978-3-631-57334-1
  • Klare, Jörn (2010): What am I worth? - A price determination, Berlin. ISBN 978-3-518-46168-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hannes Spengler: Compensatory wage differentials and the value of a statistical life in Germany (PDF; 231 kB)
  2. ↑ Werner Mussler: Does a human life have a monetary value? In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, No. 22, June 6, 2005
  3. ^ W. Kip Viscusi, Racial Differences in Labor Market Values ​​of a Statistical Life. In: 27 (2003) J. RISK & UNCERTAINTY pp. 239, 252.
  4. ↑ Jochen Fehling: The Ethics of the Value of a Statistical Life: The role of individual risk competence for the legitimacy of the VSL. Munich, Mering 2010, p. 94.
  5. ↑ 2739.72 euros per day . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , No. 12, 2010, March 28, 2010, p. 1.
  6. ↑ Dieter Birnbacher: Analytical introduction to ethics. 2nd edition, Walter de Gruyter, 2007, ISBN 3-11-089525-0 , p. 268.
  7. ^ German Ethics Council: Benefits and costs in the health system - on the normative function of their assessment. ( Memento of the original from February 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 402 kB) Berlin 2011, p. 74. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ethikrat.org
  8. ^ German Ethics Council: Benefits and costs in the health system - on the normative function of their assessment. ( Memento of the original from February 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 402 kB) Berlin 2011, pp. 68ff. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ethikrat.org
  9. ^ Rexford E. Santerre, Stephen P. Nine: Health Economics: Theories, Insights, and Industry Studies . 5th ed., Cengage Learning, 2009, ISBN 0-324-78908-4 , p. 75.
  10. ^ For example Cass Sunstein: VALUING LIFE: A PLEA FOR DISAGGREGATION In: DUKE LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 54 (2004), pp. 385 ff., 417.