Life-Cycle Consumption and the Age-Adjusted Value of Life
42 Pages Posted: 26 Jul 2010 Last revised: 22 Jul 2022
There are 2 versions of this paper
Life-Cycle Consumption and the Age-Adjusted Value of Life
Date Written: February 2004
Abstract
Our research examines empirically the age pattern of the implicit value of life revealed from workers' differential wages and job safety pairings. Although aging reduces the number of years of life expectancy, aging can affect the value of life through an effect on planned life-cycle consumption. The elderly could, a priori, have the highest implicit value of life if there is a life-cycle plan to defer consumption until old age. We find that largely due to the age pattern of consumption, which is non-constant, the implicit value of life rises and falls over the lifetime in a way that the value for the elderly is higher than the average over all ages or for the young. There are important policy implications of our empirical results. Because there may be age-specific benefits of programs to save statistical lives, instead of valuing the lives of the elderly at less than the young, policymakers should more correctly value the lives of the elderly at as much as twice the young because of relatively greater consumption lost when accidental death occurs.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Adjusting the Value of a Statistical Life for Age and Cohort Effects
By Joseph E. Aldy and W. Kip Viscusi
-
Age Variations in Workers' Value of Statistical Life
By Joseph E. Aldy and W. Kip Viscusi
-
Age Variations in Workers' Value of Statistical Life
By Joseph E. Aldy and W. Kip Viscusi
-
Life-Cycle Consumption and the Age-Adjusted Value of Life
By Thomas J. Kniesner, W. Kip Viscusi, ...
-
Age Differences in the Value of Statistical Life: Revealed Preference Evidence
By Joseph E. Aldy and W. Kip Viscusi
-
By Isaac Ehrlich and Yong Yin
-
By Isaac Ehrlich and Yong Yin
-
Labor Market Estimates of the Senior Discount for the Value of Statistical Life
By W. Kip Viscusi and Joseph E. Aldy
-
By W. Kip Viscusi and Joni Hersch
-
U.S. Life Tables for 1990 by Sex, Race, and Education
By Hugh Richards and Ronald Barry