Valuing Life_ A Plea for Disaggregation

444 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 54:385
that it combines extremely high global costs with relatively low global
benefits, even if the problem of global warming is taken quite
seriously. A sensible approach would control emissions in developing
countries, so as to increase the overall benefits, and also would use
emissions trading and other strategies to reduce the overall costs.
These routes could certainly produce sensible agreements to address
climate change. 196 To the extent that emissions control in developing
countries would impose a significant burden, wealthy nations should
help to foot the bill.
But I am not attempting here to resolve any particular
controversy. My major suggestions are that within nations, diverse
VSLs are perfectly sensible, and that answers to questions about
valuation must be closely attuned to the purposes for which those
questions are being asked.
CONCLUSION
The theory that animates current valuations of mortality risks
argues in favor of far more individuation. Does the risk involve
cancer? What kind of cancer? Does it involve air pollution or driving
on the highways? If welfare and autonomy are the guides, it is obtuse
to adopt an approach that values all statistically equivalent mortality
risks in the same way. In addition, individuals display a great deal of
heterogeneity in their VSLs—not simply because of different tastes
and values, but also because of different levels of income and wealth.
WTP depends on ability to pay. Nothing that I have said here is
meant to suggest approval of existing distributions of resources.
Certainly poor people are not “worth less” than wealthy ones, and it
is often appropriate for government to provide resources directly to
poor people or subsidize the provision of regulatory benefits. But
forced exchanges are not a good way to assist poor people, and a
uniform VSL is often a perverse response to inequality. In theory,
risk-reduction policies should be more fully individuated, giving all
people regulatory protection that corresponds to their WTP for the
particular risk in question.
Of course this is not practicable. Government lacks the necessary
information about individual risk preferences; categorical judgments
are inevitable. In any case many of the benefits provided by
196. RICHARD B. STEWART & JONATHAN B. WIENER, RECONSTRUCTING CLIMATE
POLICY 38–40, 102–09 (2003).