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A person who earns $57k/year working full time from age 18 to age 68 "only" makes $2.85 million over the course of their life. Obviously, a certain premium is
by michaelt 3y ago
A person who earns $57k/year working full time from age 18 to age 68 "only" makes $2.85 million over the course of their life.
Obviously, a certain premium is appropriate, to reflect all the value that isn't reflected in salary, like raising children, caring for elderly parents, chores around the house, voluntary work and so on. And there's no amount of money that will make a person whole again after, say, the loss of their spouse.
But if for statistical purposes we absolutely have to?
I'd say $7.5 million sounds pretty generous.
- DeathArrow 3y agoHow can the amount of money a person earns over his lifetime equal the value of his life? Are Musk, Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Buffett 1 000 000 times more valuable than other persons?
- simmerup 3y agoFrom the wikipedia article where this number is taken from: > Suppose each person in a sample of 100,000 people were asked how much he or she would be willing to pay for a reduction in their individual risk of dying by 1 in 100,000, or 0.001%, over the next year. Since this reduction in risk would mean that we would expect one fewer death among the sample of 100,000 people over the next year on average, this is sometimes described as "one statistical life saved.” Now suppose that the average response to this hypothetical question was $100. Then the total dollar amount that the group would be willing to pay to save one statistical life in a year would be $100 per person × 100,000 people, or $10 million. This is what is meant by the "value of a statistical life.”
- michaelt 3y agoDid you notice the bit where I said it was right and just that the value not merely be the earnings, but more besides? As to Bezos and Gates, fortunately the statistical value of a life only has to concern itself with the median person, not with outliers.