7 - Lives, Damned Lives, and Statistics

Summary

Environmental preservation is not the only policy arena where debates about monetizing intangible values has arisen. The value of life saving arises in a number of contexts, including health and transportation as well as environmental policy. Today, economists routinely use a concept known as the Value of Statistical Life (VSL) to measure the value of life-saving investments. Thomas Schelling made the crucial move to this way of thinking, which stresses small mortality _risks_ rather than individual lives, with the hope to dodge the moral thicket of valuing life. But as recent policy debates have illustrated, his move only thickened it. Tellingly, interest in the subject can be traced back another twenty years before Schellings essay, to a controversy at the RAND Corporation following its earliest application of operation research to defense planning. RAND wanted to avoid valuing pilots lives, but the Air Force insisted they confront the issue. Thus, the VSL is not only well acquainted with political controversy; it was born from it.