Valuing Life_ A Plea for Disaggregation

2004] VALUING LIFE 411
is identical. This point is enough to suggest that VSL cannot be
uniform across risks.
Third, it is possible that extreme aversion to certain risks reflects
a form of bounded rationality 107 —and it is doubtful whether that
extreme aversion should be allowed to play a role in regulatory
policy. Suppose, for example, that people really are willing to pay
twice as much to avoid a cancer risk as to avoid a sudden,
unanticipated death. Must these numbers be decisive for purposes of
policy, assuming that the contingent valuation study is reliable? They
might not be if there is reason to believe that the WTP figures are not
accurately measuring welfare. And is it even plausible to think that
the “cancer premium” is so high that it actually doubles the cost of
death? Is it reasonable to think that a death from cancer is actually
twice as bad as a death that is sudden and unanticipated? To be sure,
a degree of pain and suffering typically accompanies cancer, and that
fact illustrates the obtuseness of using the same number for cancer
risks as for risks of sudden, unanticipated deaths. But it is not easy to
defend the set of (exotic) values that would lead to the conclusion
that the relevant pain and suffering is as bad as death itself. If WTP
does not accurately measure welfare in the case of cancer, and if the
inflated numbers for cancer deaths are a product of an intuitive recoil
or terror at the idea of cancer, then regulators should not use the
unrealistically high monetary values.
For those who emphasize autonomy rather than welfare, perhaps
this point does not amount to an objection to the use of WTP. If the
goal is to respect people’s autonomy, regulators should defer to their
judgments even if those judgments are mistaken. But if people show
an especially high WTP because of a visceral reaction to cancer, or
because of insufficiently thoughtful assessments of the stakes, then it
is not clear that autonomy calls for following WTP. Government does
not respect people’s autonomy if it follows their uninformed choices;
this proposition raises doubts about government’s use of uninformed
WTP. To be least controversial, WTP numbers would reflect
informed rather than reflexive judgments about the nature of the
harms involved.
107. See Sunstein, supra note 8, at 248 (“WTP will be a poor proxy for welfare in cases in
which we have good reason to suppose that underestimation or overestimation is likely. Of
course government officials should be reluctant to second-guess citizens, but in some cases, the
second-guessing is well justified.”).