It sounds harsh. But sometimes it is useful to express the value of a human life in money. How much is a human life worth? What does a person have to cost?
Why do we want to express human lives in money?
Why are some researchers so keen to express human lives in money? At the Road Safety Scientific Research Foundation they have three reasons for this:
- It makes it possible to make cost-benefit analyses. By expressing all the consequences of a traffic measure in money, policymakers can simply add the consequences for the environment and travel time to the consequences of road safety, including the lives saved.
- The damage resulting from a specific traffic accident can thus be expressed in money. If a human life has no monetary value, it is also not possible to recover the costs from the person who caused the damage.
- Monetizing human lives makes it possible to determine the total costs of traffic accidents on an annual basis. You can then compare this with occupational safety or environmental pollution.
Your money or your life!
A criminal puts a gun to your head and says: ‘Your money or your life!’. The doctor says: ‘We can cure you, but you have to pay for the treatment yourself’. In both cases the question is: how much would you pay to stay alive? The answer is simple: everything you own, of course. Man would rather be poor than dead. A ‘statistical’ life is different. It is not about your life, but about the life of a random person. It can be illustrated as follows. We ask a large group of people how much they are willing to pay for an airbag. An airbag reduces the risk of a fatal accident from 7 deaths per 100,000 people annually to 4 deaths per 100,000 people. Suppose people are willing to pay an average of 60 euros annually to reduce that risk. Then 100,000 people together are willing to pay 6 million. That budget is available for saving three statistical lives. In other words: 2 million euros per statistical victim.
Vaccination
A flu shot for all citizens? Good idea. For every $140 spent on it, someone lives one year longer. Vaccinating children aged 2 to 4 years against pneumonia is less cost-effective. That costs more than a thousandfold per year of life gained.
Benzene emissions
Controlling benzene emissions in the US rubber tire industry did not appear to have much of an impact on health. $20 billion will be spent to prevent one person from dying one year early.
Road safety
Mandating seat belts is a bargain: for every $69 you spend, someone lives a year longer. Every $120,000 Americans spend on it saves one year of life.
The salvation of one man
What is a life worth in hard euros? We can’t keep it to ourselves any longer. According to the SWOV method, it turned out that a random, so-called ‘statistical’ human life is worth approximately 2.2 million euros. The Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management has indicated that it will soon also use the figure in its calculations. Those 2.2 million euros are what society is willing to pay for the rescue of one person. Does a traffic measure that saves one human life cost less than 2.2 million euros? Then it is wise to implement the rule. If it is more expensive, then it is better not to do it.