Value of Statistical Life
The value of a statistical life (VSL) is the marginal rate of substitution between income and the probability of death — how much a population is collectively willing to pay for a small reduction in mortality risk, expressed per expected life saved. It is not the value of any identified person's life but the aggregate willingness to trade money for tiny risk changes: if 100,000 people each pay $100 to reduce their annual fatality risk by one in 100,000, society spends $10 million to prevent one statistical death, implying a VSL of $10 million. VSL is the central input to benefit-cost analysis of health, safety, and environmental regulations, and is estimated from labor-market wage-risk data (revealed preference) or from surveys (stated preference).
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Viscusi, W. K., & Aldy, J. E. (2003). The value of a statistical life: a critical review of market estimates throughout the world. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 27(1), 5–76. · DOI 10.1023/A:1025598106257
- Rosen, S. (1974). Hedonic prices and implicit markets: product differentiation in pure competition. Journal of Political Economy, 82(1), 34–55. · DOI 10.1086/260169
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.