
How Much Is a Human Life Worth? - danielrpa
https://www.wired.com/story/how-much-is-human-life-worth-in-dollars/
======
cousin_it
The question doesn't make sense as is. It should be rephrased in marginal
terms: if we decide to spend one extra dollar on saving lives compared to
today's situation, how many lives will it save? Also it should be measured in
QALYs, not lives. I don't know the exact answer, but I've seen estimates from
20K$ to 200K$/QALY. (That's for the West, in the developing world it's much
cheaper.)

~~~
etrevino
FYI for those who don't know: QALY is Quality Adjusted Life Year. Parent is
right that it's problem the best metric to use. I believe that we aren't using
it because we don't know the morbidity that results from Covid-19. In other
words, we don't know how Covid affects people's long term health. Someone
might survive the virus, but end up having long term lung or liver or whatever
damage. That reduces their capacity to work and may reduce their lifespan,
i.e., their economic output after the life-saving intervention is reduced.

------
malyk
Here’s a good recent RadioLab episode with the guy who calculated the current
$10m figure.

[https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/835571843/episode-991-lives-v...](https://www.npr.org/2020/04/15/835571843/episode-991-lives-
vs-the-economy)

~~~
herrvogel-
A bit older, but this[1] Freakonomics episode was also great.

[1][https://freakonomics.com/podcast/kenneth-
feinberg/](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/kenneth-feinberg/)

------
stargrazer
Why do articles insist on providing numbers with no appropriate context? What
do the absolute number of deaths of 9/11 or absolute number of deaths in Viet
Nam have to do with this?

Perhaps better comparisons would be: how many deaths are there in the world
per day? Before and after the instigation of covid19? How many deaths due to
pneumonia before and after?

Has the death rate in other categories been reduced? Are there fewer
accidents? Maybe we should just lock down forever because it might save at
least one death due to accident?

"On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero".

~~~
DennisP
Appropriate context: right now, daily US deaths from covid19 are about equal
to heart disease and cancer. That's pretty high for a threat that didn't exist
a few months ago.

We try pretty hard to reduce heart disease and cancer deaths, but we don't
social distance for them because they're not contagious. If we allow covid's
exponential spread to resume, it will be our leading cause of death before
long.

Meanwhile, countries that did strict lockdowns for a while and used that time
to roll out lots of testing are getting through this with little damage.

~~~
glofish
The problem with your math there is that by and large, we are talking about
the same people - only the timeline is different.

It is just as possible that over a longer time period say a year the math will
be radically different. We'll have fewer cancer deaths because the patient had
already died of COVID. It is possible that a country has many deaths because
up to that point it was able to keep large swaths of "terminally ill" people
alive.

Delay, isolation and testing do not actually solve anything. For large
segments of the population the virus is not a risk at all, they can't even
tell that are infected.

Long term it is not obvious who gets out better, the population where the
infection rates are high and they can reduce the crippling economical
restrictions or populations where they managed to have no infections but the
sanctions remain for years.

History, in general, is characterized by surprising twists and turns where it
was impossible to tell what comes next.

~~~
baddox
All deaths are just people who would have died later anyway.

~~~
acdha
Yes, we are all going to die. This is not a helpful observation.

What you should be asking are two questions: what impact those deaths
happening all at once has on everyone else when the medical system is
overwhelmed and how much earlier are COVID victims dying than they otherwise
would?

In the latter case, the early studies suggest even elderly people are losing
at least a decade early. That’s a lot of time to casually blow off the way
you’re doing even before you consider the younger victims. Maybe you’re young,
healthy, and low-risk but do you really have no older people you know that you
wouldn’t want another decade to share time with?

[https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/02/would-
mo...](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/02/would-most-
covid-19-victims-have-died-soon-without-the-virus)

[https://abcnews.go.com/Health/people-coronavirus-
dying-10-ye...](https://abcnews.go.com/Health/people-coronavirus-
dying-10-years-earlier-naturally-study/story?id=70511494)

~~~
DennisP
I agree with you, and I think your parent comment does as well. They were
pointing out the flaw in an argument made in their parent comment.

~~~
acdha
It’s possible - there’s enough misinformation floating around here that it’s
become necessary to avoid ambiguity on certain topics.

------
lidHanteyk
Consider: You are worth about $10mil, in terms of labor. If you work for
40yrs, from 20 to 60, then you are worth about $250k/yr.

Conclusion: We are underpaying nearly everybody in society.

~~~
simonh
The $10m is not calculated based on economic value. As explained in the
article, it’s calculated based on extrapolating how much we will pay in order
to avoid some small risk, then dividing that by the fractional risk. So if we
will pay $1k to avoid a one in 10,000 risk of dying then a life is worth $10m.
Economic value doesn’t come into it.

If you’re interested US GDP is $22tn, with a work force of 164m people. That
gives an economic product of about $134k per person per year on average. That
includes unemployed people though, because it’s the labour force size not the
number of people in employment.

~~~
lidHanteyk
Labor's value does not come from its output; I am not talking about economic
value. I am, rather, talking about opportunity cost; for what amount of money
would I spend time, my only personal and non-renewable resource, on anything
besides what I want to spend it on?

------
ovslylegit
wharton published a "Coronavirus Policy Response Simulator" on may 1st [1].

Their analysis comes to the conclusion that fully reopening ("States
immediately lift all orders listed above as well as restrictions on the
operation of businesses and restaurants.") would lead to 500k lost jobs from
May first and 350k deaths until end of june 2020, while partially reopening
("States immediately lift emergency declarations, stay-at-home orders, and
school closures.") would result in -11.3 Million jobs lost and 162k deaths.
Both assuming, that each individual maintains their current social distancing
practice. Year-Over-Year GDP change % would be almost identical, -10.1 vs.
-10.7.

So fully reopening, compared to partially, would save ~11 million jobs, but
lead to roughly 190k more deaths.

Considering the $10 million as the current value of a human life, a job would
be $~172k for the comparison fully vs partially reopening while maintaining
current social distancing measures.

[1]
[https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2020/5/1/corona...](https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2020/5/1/coronavirus-
reopening-simulator)

------
altmind
In monetary value, there's couple estimates in Wikipedia. I've heard that for
airplane designers, they assume the value of life at 10M for safety features
design purposes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life)

------
snorrah
$10 million is the current value of life, with the article ending by
suggesting it’s probably worth less by now.

~~~
downshun
That's about 30 thousand koi fish! Enough to feed a town for three days!

~~~
davidajackson
Or 60,000,000 Bells.

------
ken
This is a pretty good overview of the issues, but I note one significant
omission.

> Take a program to save lives in a large, well-known population with a risk
> that’s well-understood but small, and then ask, OK, what’s that worth? You
> can figure that out through surveys or consumer behavior— “revealed
> preference,” as economists call it. Take what people will spend individually
> to avoid a teensy risk, and multiply it by the odds of that risk coming to
> pass and the total number of people it might affect. That’s it.

Humans are notoriously bad at estimating risk, especially with very small
numbers. We can't even accurately tell you which of two small risks is
greater.

Asking people for estimates could be a good system _if_ there were a solid
correlation between risk and cost.

------
sandworm101
>> How Much Is a Human Life Worth?

Which life? The reality is that we do not value all lives equally. Wealth,
location, legal status, and less acknowledged factors like age, sex and race,
all result in some lives being more valuable than others. That is the world in
which we live.

So when we look at covid-19 one must first ask: who is it killing? Is it
killing the more or less valuable members? Or, rather than face that horrible
question, are we willing to take the hard road and value all lives equally?
That road leads to dangerous areas such as universal health care and
government-sponsored wellness.

~~~
WaitWaitWha
The article mentions this explicitly.

" _Some economists even think that globally, poorer people in the developing
world may well value their risk lower because they simply have less to spend,
and more to lose. Even if it’s true, acknowledging it puts you on a slip-n-
slide to racism and eugenics._ "

------
generalpass
No matter whether people own their own lives. It is for experts and
bureaucrats to decide what are lives are worth, what our lives are for, what
is safe, what is acceptable.

Human life is just an equation for the central planners to tweak.

Soon, we will be each be followed an assigned quadcopter monitoring our every
activity to make sure we are not engaged in any unsafe activities so as to be
certain we are providing our maximum societal output.

------
praptak
So, how much money or effort would you spend to avoid a hypothetical event
that kills you with a well known probability, say half percent?

I don't even know a conceptual framework to think about it. For 100% it would
probably be "all my money" (I'm not suicidal). Should it be half percent of my
money for a half percent event?

~~~
shakezula
But it’s not just your life you’re gambling with. You’re gambling with other
people’s lives. People who have just as much right to life as you do. People
who may be in a much higher risk bracket than you. People who might very well
die.

~~~
praptak
I'm not talking about the virus, just a hypothetical event that kills only me

------
wtfrmyinitials
I thought this was a pretty decent article until the very end when the author
asserts:

> ...nobody could be bothered to develop a nationwide program to test people
> for infection and trace their contacts if they were positive, or to
> adequately support a pause of economic activity...

As for nationwide program to test people, of course nothing was built yet;
it's a novel virus and therefore novel tests are needed. If a government had
built out contact tracing pre-covid, they would be (rightly) criticized for
taking steps in an authoritarian direction. Apple and Google have stepped in
and built contact tracing, so to say this hasn't been developed is also
factually inaccurate. Finally the comment about the ability to "adequately
support a pause of economic activity" is kind of silly. To pause economic
activity is to pause everyone's lives. What does it mean to adequately support
people when they're no longer allowed to do the things they enjoy?

It was a breath of fresh air to read an article that admitted that this is a
difficult trade off, not some kind of easy decision that's being ruined by
_the other guy_. It was disappointing that it was concluded with a similar
tone.

~~~
verall
> adequately support a pause of economic activity

They mean to support people & families that lose their jobs. A good example is
Florida and a couple states with intentionally byzantine and understaffed
unemployment offices - claims are being handled so slowly that tons of at-risk
people who have lost their jobs and are eligible for federal dollars will not
see them.

Adequately supporting a pause in economic activity might have included
overhauling or providing alternate systems for states with broken unemployment
or paying wages private wages to prevent layoffs.

I don't particularly like the latter option but I certainly feel like a
competent government could have paused economic activity and then supported
its frozen citizens better.

3 of my favorite local restaurants have closed since the pandemic. There are
"nonessential" businesses still expected to make $6k/mo rent without any
customers. The private equity that owns most of the land in the area seems not
to mind at all; construction is still booming...

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Florida’s junior senator brought this upon the state. I hope Floridians
remember in 2024: [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/florida-
unemployment...](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/florida-unemployment-
benefits-desantis-trump-rick-scott.html)

~~~
michaelcampbell
They will. They'll remember he's the nominee of the party they don't hate
because of some single stance on some single issue, and vote for him.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
"Some single stance on some single issue" is millions of Floridians having to
fight with terrible software designed to keep them from getting benefits they
deserve—which they need to pay their rent, pay their mortgage, put food on the
table, put gas in the car, or purchase medications.

~~~
michaelcampbell
For some. For others it's abortion, or gun rights, or a desired theocracy (but
only for their own religion).

------
flexie
A better question would be ‘How many years do we save’ because the vast
majority of the people dying from covid-19 are old people who already suffer
from one or more prior diseases.

The average life lost in Vietnam or Afghanistan had maybe 55-60 years left,
had it not been for the bullet that cut it short. The average age of covid-19
victims is maybe 73 or so, and those people would in average have lived
another 0-5 years (typically less than the average life span for men of 78.5
years because of the prior illness).

~~~
chinathrow
It's way more than 0-5 years, it's 10 years according to a study made by
researchers at University of Glasgow.

[https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75](https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75)

"Deaths from COVID-19 represent a substantial burden in terms of per-person
YLL, more than a decade, even after adjusting for the typical number and type
of LTCs found in people dying of COVID-19. The extent of multimorbidity
heavily influences the estimated YLL at a given age. More comprehensive and
standardised collection of data on LTCs is needed to better understand and
quantify the global burden of COVID-19 and to guide policy-making and
interventions."

------
war1025
The value of a human life is in most cases next to nothing. A life is
priceless to the closest friends and family. Beyond that its value drops
rapidly.

If lives were anywhere near as precious to politicians as they like to
pretend, we wouldn't be sending kids off to war. We would be investing in
anti-poverty measures.

The value of a life to someone in power is proportional to the likelihood of
being overthrown or pushed out of office due to that person's death. Often a
life has negative value to such a person.

~~~
bilbo0s
> _Often a life has negative value to such a person._

Never thought about it this way, but it's true. A dead person can't vote
against you. So to the extent that a given person, or group of people, can be
relied on to vote against you, it wouldn't be that bad for you game
theoretically if they were not around.

~~~
clairity
that's why we shouldn't let power concentrate in any person or organization,
public, private, or religious.

~~~
bilbo0s
At least no organization that requires votes.

Absent illegal activity, money will continue to flow when a person dies, but
votes can be guaranteed to stop.

~~~
clairity
i'd say it generalizes pretty well to any threat to power, not just votes.

------
godelzilla
Not sure why they're doing all these calculations when capitalism already
assigns everyone a numerical worth.

------
alex_young
[deleted]

~~~
shiftpgdn
Everything you've written is wrong. No dead were burried in a park and there
was mostly plenty of space for dead bodies. You should watch less CNN.

------
missedthecue
Whatever someone's willing to pay for it

------
lowdose
> Assuming that social distancing measures can substantially reduce contacts
> among individuals, we find net benefits of about $5.2 trillion in our
> benchmark case.

The article linked to this paper but I find their conclusion very unlikely.
$5.2 trillion is 6% of the world combined GDP. When people are not performing
value adding activities they consume value. Inventing money out of thin air is
not similar to people actually creating value.

If these are the numbers our politicians base their decisions on we are in
deep trouble.

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561934](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561934)

