The Value of Human Life

Abstract

r; aG?j ANY attempts have been made to estimate the money value of human life, some of the most careful by members of this Association. The usual point of view is to consider that the money value of a life i represented by its value to its possessor, or to his 2kn!3 ~family. Most hygienists count the money value of life in terms of earning power or wages. To the individual and his family his earnings are indeed the most urgent economic factor of life and it is natural that this viewpoint should be first in the minds of most of us. Though it does not take into consideration the very great economic importance of the non-wage-earning work of wives and other housekeepers, an estimate of wages lost by sickness and death does serve to illustrate the enormous dimensions and importance of the problems which the hygienists have to solve. According to this view, the capital value of a human life varies according to age, depending as it does on the two factors of earning capacity and expectancy of life. How much does a person earn and how long will he live? The answers to these questions will enable us to state how much he is worth. Years ago, Farr, in England, estimated that the new-born babe of an agricultural laborer was worth $Z5, and figured out an increasing value up to middle life, after which the figures slowly declined. Fisher, assuming $700 as the average annual earnings of all workers in the United States (though he asserts, and probably correctly, that $i,ooo is nearer the true figure), calculates that the value of a wage earner varies from $90 at birth to a maximum of $4,I00 at 30 years, sinking again to $z,900 at 5o. He further estimates, by using the census figures for age distribution, that the average economic value of the inhabitants of the United States is