Talk:Value of life

	; Archives (Index) ;
	2013; 2019; 2020;
	This page is archived by ClueBot III.

Business Mid‑importance

	Business portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Business, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of business articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BusinessWikipedia:WikiProject BusinessTemplate:WikiProject BusinessWikiProject Business articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Death Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Death, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Death on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DeathWikipedia:WikiProject DeathTemplate:WikiProject DeathDeath articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Economics Mid‑importance

	Business and economics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Economics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Economics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EconomicsWikipedia:WikiProject EconomicsTemplate:WikiProject EconomicsEconomics articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Philosophy: Ethics Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy articles

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Associated task forces:
/
	Ethics

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Hpigu001.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 12:14, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This entire entry is mis-named[edit]

The Value of Statistical Life is an economic concept and body of research. Given that the entry is referring to VSL, it should be renamed to reflect that. The Value of Statistical Life does not purport to be "the value of life." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:985:300:2050:95E5:6332:8C2:3A9C (talk) 14:32, 25 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

+1, this makes sense to me as well. 99% of this article is about VSL, VPF, etc. And I just removed the 1% that (incorrectly and without citation) talked about how legal systems necessarily place an infinite value on life. Quohx (talk) 00:27, 18 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I came here to second this as well. This article name is possibly taking the place of the philosophical value of life. A page that would likely exist if it weren't for this name. I.Elgamal (talk) 10:26, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Policy applications at 5 or 10 percent?[edit]

On 2021-05-29 the section on #Policy applications of the VSL said, "For example, the valuation estimates used for mortality were ... discounted with a 5 percent discount rate", and cited W. Kip Viscusi (1995). Fatal Tradeoffs: Public & private responsibilities for risk. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-510293-2. OL 7387815M. Wikidata Q107024073..

PROBLEMS:

I do not find a 5 percent discount rate mentioned in the book cited. Instead on p. 163, I found the following:

Viscusi and Moore (1989) estimated "discount rates in the vicinity of 11 percent" implied by workers behaviors towards risks on the job, "but the standard errors on these estimates are sufficient to include other market reference points, such as prevailing mortgage interest rates."
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (1988) "has long specified a 10 percent rate of discount ... an approach that will drastically reduce the attractiveness of policies such as those that reduce cancer risks or have long-term implications for our ecological well-being."

However, Jim DeMocker; Al McGartland; Tom Gillis (October 1997), Robert D. Brenner; Richard D. Morgenstern (eds.), The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act, 1970-1990 (PDF), United States Environmental Protection Agency, Wikidata Q107024778, cited after the next sentence, recommends a discount rate of 5 percent but compares it with 3 and 7 percent.

By contrast, the Wikipedia article on Disability-adjusted life year (DALY) cites Colin Mathers; Gretchen Stevens (November 2013), WHO methods and data sources for global burden of disease estimates 2000-2011 (PDF), World Health Organization, Wikidata Q107023735, which says that prior to 2010 the World Health Organization (WHO) use 3 percent discounting but stopped discounting in 2010, because even at 3 percent almost anything could happen to seniors without a substantive impact on DALY, and that seemed ethically unreasonable.

Another minor problem is that the current text refers to a "figure 1", which is NOT in this article but is presumably in a reference cited. That seems like a problem to me.

CONCLUSION: I don't feel that I understand enough of the subtleties involved with using "Value of life" to feel comfortable modifying this article right now, and I don't know if I can create the time to try to fix this. I hope that someone else who knows this subject much better than I do will try to fix these problem.

DavidMCEddy (talk) 15:04, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Changes by Ayushbhoir0008[edit]

I can not comment on the contents of the changes by User:Ayushbhoir0008 made in December. But the form is very bad: Abbrevations lost their sense, a reference is just plain text "[1]", and links were removed. How to proceed? Faulenzius Seltenda (talk) 13:28, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]