Valuing Life_ A Plea for Disaggregation

2004] VALUING LIFE 439
always hold, and if the goal is to provide more assistance to those in
need, a uniform VSL is hardly the best way to achieve that goal.
Consider the case of poor areas of the country: a national VSL of $6.1
million would almost certainly be harmful, simply because the
resulting levels of regulation would have adverse effects on wages and
employment levels. My only point is that in some cases, individuation
across persons will produce worse outcomes on distributional grounds
and possibly on grounds of welfare as well.
IV. GLOBAL RISK REGULATION AND CROSS-NATIONAL
VALUATIONS
The analysis thus far has significant implications for global risk
regulation and cross-cultural variations in WTP and VSL. In this Part,
I turn to those implications. My conclusion is that poor countries
should use a lower VSL than wealthy countries, and that people in
poor countries are not helped if the United States, or an international
body, insists on a high one. But the analysis must be different if the
question is the behavior of donors or donor nations. Nations who are
most in need deserve help, even if their WTP is low. For purposes of
regulation, however, insistence on a high VSL will not provide that
help. I begin with the distinction between donor practices and
government regulation and then turn to the practical question of
cross-national valuations.
A. Are Indian Lives Worth Less Than American Lives?
I have suggested that people in poor nations show a lower WTP
and hence VSL than people in wealthy nations. 187
Because poor
people have less money than rich people, this finding should not be at
all surprising. Building on evidence of this kind, some assessments of
the effects of global warming find far higher monetized costs from
deaths of people in rich countries than from deaths of people in poor
countries. 188
These assessments have been highly controversial;
187. See supra Table 3.
188. See Kirsten Halsnaes et al., Case Studies for Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mauritius and Thailand, in
CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: PROSPECTS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 202,
206–07 (Anil Markandya & Kirsten Halsnaes, eds., 2002) (calculating a VSL for the European Union
of $3.9 million in 1995 prices, compared to VSLs of $315,000 to $1.2 million for the four developing
countries in the case study); cf. INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, THIRD
ASSESSMENT REPORT: CLIMATE CHANGE 2001: MITIGATION 483 (finding that “[t]he VSL is generally
lower in poor countries than in rich countries”), available at http://grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg3.