Pricing Lives: Guideposts for a Safer Society
- ISBN-10
- 069120859X
- ISBN-13
- 9780691208596
- Category
- Business & Economics
- Pages
- 296
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020-09-08
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Author
- W. Kip Viscusi
Description
How society's undervaluing of life puts all of us at risk--and the groundbreaking economic measure that can fix it Like it or not, sometimes we need to put a monetary value on people's lives. In the past, government agencies used the financial "cost of death" to monetize the mortality risks of regulatory policies, but this method vastly undervalued life. Pricing Lives tells the story of how the government came to adopt an altogether different approach--the value of a statistical life, or VSL--and persuasively shows how its more widespread use could create a safer and more equitable society for everyone. In the 1980s, W. Kip Viscusi used the method to demonstrate that the benefits of requiring businesses to label hazardous chemicals immensely outweighed the costs. VSL is the risk-reward trade-off that people make about their health when considering risky job choices. With it, Viscusi calculated how much more money workers would demand to take on hazardous jobs, boosting calculated benefits by an order of magnitude. His current estimate of the value of a statistical life is $10 million. In this book, Viscusi provides a comprehensive look at all aspects of economic and policy efforts to price lives, including controversial topics such as whether older people's lives are worth less and richer people's lives are worth more. He explains why corporations need to abandon the misguided cost-of-death approach, how the courts can profit from increased application of VSL in assessing liability and setting damages, and how other countries consistently undervalue risks to life. Pricing Lives proposes sensible economic guideposts to foster more protective policies and greater levels of safety in the United States and throughout the world.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2023-08-30
- 321 pages
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press
Similar books
-
Pricing Life: Why It's Time for Health Care Rationing
By Peter A. UbelIn this book physician and bioethicist Peter A. Ubel argues that physicians, health insurance companies, managed care organizations, and governments need to consider the cost-effectiveness of many new health care technologies.
-
Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities
By Andre M. PerryKnow Your Price demonstrates the worth of Black people’s intrinsic personal strengths, real property, and traditional institutions.
-
The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life
By Eli CookEli Cook shows how, and why, we moderns lost sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life.
-
Ultimate Price: The Value We Place on Life
By Howard Steven FriedmanThis is critical since undervalued lives are left less-protected and more exposed to risk.
-
The Lives of Agnes Smedley
By Ruth PriceOr all of these things? Drawing on fifteen years of intensive research and unprecedented access to previously unpublished documents, this vibrant book brings to life one of the twentieth century's most fascinating women.
-
A Whole New Life
By Reynolds PriceThe distinguished novelist offers an account of his battle with cancer of the spine, describing his struggle to come to terms with the disease, its treatment, and his determination to get on with his life.
-
A Better Life for Half the Price: How to Prosper on Less Money in the Cheapest Places to Live
By Tim LeffelPresents good value destinations to live in around the world and how to transition.
-
Life Settlements and Longevity Structures: Pricing and Risk Management
By Geoff Chaplin, Jim Aspinwall, Mark VennThis book provides readers of all levels of experience with essential information on the process surrounding the acquisition and management of a portfolio of life settlements; the assessment, modelling and mitigation of the associated ...
-
Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India
By Sharmila RudrappaSharmila Rudrappa interrogates the creation and maintenance of reproductive labor markets, the function of agencies and surrogacy brokers, and how women become surrogate mothers.
-
The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
By Zachary D. Carter39. Virginia Woolf to Vanessa Bell , December 22 , 1922 , in Virginia Woolf , The Letters of Virginia Woolf , vol . 2 : 1912–1922 , ed . Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann ( New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich , 1977 ) , 594–95 . 40.