The Cost-per-Life-Saved Cutoff for Safety-Enhancing Regulations

Randall Lutter (), Morrall, John F, and W Viscusi

Economic Inquiry, 1999, vol. 37, issue 4, 599-608

Abstract: This article develops a model of the conditions under which risk regulations that are too expensive have net adverse health effects. Two principal components of this relationship are the implicit value of life and the income elasticity of risky behaviors. Using new empirical estimates for the income elasticity of many of the most consequential risk-related behaviors, our results imply that a $15 million decrease in income is associated with the loss of an additional statistical life. Regulations that cost more than $15 million per expected life saved will have counterproductive effects on individual mortality. Copyright 1999 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1999
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