Landefeld J S, Seskin E P
Am J Public Health. 1982 Jun;72(6):555-66. doi: 10.2105/ajph.72.6.555.
Human capital estimates of the economic value of life have been routinely used in the past to perform cost-benefit analyses of health programs. Recently, however, serious questions have been raised concerning the conceptual basis for valuing human life by applying these estimates. Most economists writing on these issues tend to agree that a more conceptually correct method to value risks to human life in cost-benefit analyses would be based on individuals.' "willingness to pay" for small changes in their probability of survival. Attempts to implement the willingness-to-pay approach using survey responses or revealed-preference estimates have produced a confusing array of values fraught with statistical problems and measurement difficulties. As a result, economists have searched for a link between willingness to pay and standard human capital estimates and have found that for most individuals a lower bound for valuing risks to life can be based on their willingness to pay to avoid the expected economic losses associated with death. However, while these studies provide support for using individual's private valuation of forgone income in valuing risks to life, it is also clear that standard human capital estimates cannot be used for this purpose without reformulation. After reviewing the major approaches to valuing risks to life, this paper concludes that estimates based on the human capital approach--reformulated using a willingness-to-pay criterion--produce the only clear, consistent, and objective values for use in cost-benefit analyses of policies affecting risks to life. The paper presents the first empirical estimates of such adjusted willingness-to-pay/human capital values.
过去，人力资本对生命经济价值的估算常被用于对健康项目进行成本效益分析。然而，最近人们对应用这些估算来评估人类生命价值的概念基础提出了严重质疑。大多数撰写这些问题的经济学家倾向于认同，在成本效益分析中，一种从概念上讲更正确的评估人类生命风险的方法应基于个人为其生存概率的微小变化而“愿意支付”的金额。试图通过调查回复或显示性偏好估算来实施支付意愿方法，得出了一系列令人困惑的值，充满了统计问题和测量困难。因此，经济学家们一直在寻找支付意愿与标准人力资本估算之间的联系，并发现对于大多数个人而言，评估生命风险的下限可以基于他们为避免与死亡相关的预期经济损失而愿意支付的金额。然而，虽然这些研究支持在评估生命风险时使用个人对放弃收入的私人估值，但同样明显的是，标准人力资本估算未经重新表述不能用于此目的。在回顾了评估生命风险的主要方法后，本文得出结论，基于人力资本方法（使用支付意愿标准重新表述）得出的估算，为影响生命风险的政策的成本效益分析提供了唯一清晰、一致且客观的值。本文给出了这种调整后的支付意愿/人力资本值的首批实证估算。
