Elana Schor in Washington and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Friday July 11, 2008
http://www.ethics.org.au/ethics_forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3203&PN=1


It sounds like a spot of gallows humour, but the numbers are no joke: the US environmental protection agency (EPA) has lowered the value of a human life by nearly $1m under George Bush's administration.

The EPA's estimate of the "value of a statistical life" was $6.9m as of this May � down from $7.8m five years ago � according to an Associated Press study released today.

Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences.

When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule.

The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation � such as the tighter restrictions on pollution that the EPA refused to impose today, effectively postponing any action on climate change until after Bush leaves office.

Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18bn to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8m per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9m per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted.

Some environmentalists accuse the Bush administration of changing the value to avoid tougher rules, a charge the EPA denies.

"It appears that they're cooking the books in regards to the value of life," S William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, said.

"Those decisions are literally a matter of life and death."

Dan Esty, a senior EPA policy official in the administration of the first President Bush and now director of the Yale centre for environmental law and policy, said: "It's hard to imagine that it has other than a political motivation."

The devaluation also raised alarms in Congress, where Senate environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer vowed to introduce legislation reversing the EPA's move.

"EPA may not think Americans are worth all that much, but the rest of us believe the value of an American life to our families, our communities, our workplaces and our nation is no less than it has ever been," Boxer, a Democrat, said.

Agency officials say they were just following what the science told them. The EPA figure is not based on people's earning capacity or their potential contributions to society -- some of the factors used in insurance claims and lawsuits.

Instead, economists calculate the value based on what people are willing to pay to avoid certain risks, and on how much extra employers pay their workers to take on additional risks.

Most of the data is drawn from payroll statistics; some comes from opinion surveys. According to the EPA, people shouldn't think of the number as a price tag on a life.

Vanderbilt university economist Kip Viscusi, whose work was used by the EPA in evaluating whether to lower the value of a life, said the cut "doesn't make sense".

"As people become more affluent, the value of statistical lives goes up as well. It has to," Viscusi told the Associated Press. He also said no study has shown that Americans are less willing to pay to reduce risks.

The EPA traditionally has put the highest value on life of any government agency and still does, despite efforts by past administrations to use the same figure in all US government agencies.

I knew I was getting old but????
Maybe my value will go up if I pass more gas!!

Maybe I didn't completely understand it, but if it is based on what people are willing to pay for employees to take risks and what employees are willing to pay to avoid risks, it sounds like the number has went down because people value employees less and people desperate to make a living are willing to settle for less to take less risks.

It sounds more like the culture of the business world that has made the change more so than the government making the change.

Read the first couple paragraphs again. It has to do with environmental regulations.

The less a life is valued the less need for regulations.
Like clean air regulations so forth and so on. The regulations mean a lot to corporations that burn coal and are forced to increase gas mileage on vehicles etc.!
1 million dollars per person has a big impact on regulations in places where the population affected is 11 million. Like in California, it affects regulations on clean air. In Pennsylvania and Ohio it allows electric plants to burn a cheaper dirtier coal. etc.

There is many areas that this affects and it benefits a lot of corporations. Im sure you can think of a few examples yourself.

Interesting Fanta.

I did not know they were doing that also. The 2 class people wars rage on

It the Washington mentality!

Anything to help my friends,,,,