The Value of Life: Estimates with Risks by Occupation and Industry

The worker fatality risk variable constructed for this article uses BLS data on total worker deaths by both occupation and industry over the 1992--97 period rather than death risks by occupation or industry alone, as in past studies. The subsequent estimates using 1997 CPS data indicate a value of life of $4.7 million for the full sample, $7.0 million for blue-collar males, and $8.5 million for blue-collar females. Unlike previous estimates, these values account for the influence of clustering of the job risk variable and compensating differentials for both workers' compensation and nonfatal job risks. (JEL J3, I1) Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

[1]  P. J. Huber.  The behavior of maximum likelihood estimates under nonstandard conditions , 1967 .

[2]  G. Guenther.  Occupational Safety and Health Act. , 1972, Health devices.

[3]  Roscoe B. Hogan,et al.  Occupational safety and health act , 1977 .

[4]  W. Kip Viscusi,et al.  Employment Hazards: An Investigation of Market Performance , 1979 .

[5]  R. Smith.  Compensating Wage Differentials and Public Policy: A Review , 1979 .

[6]  Charles Brown,et al.  Equalizing Differences in the Labor Market , 1980 .

[7]  A. Marin,et al.  The Reward for Risk in the Labor Market: Evidence from the United Kingdom and a Reconciliation with Other Studies , 1982, Journal of Political Economy.

[8]  Len M. Nichols,et al.  Wage-Risk Premiums and Workers' Compensation: A Refinement of Estimates of Compensating Wage Differential , 1983, Journal of Political Economy.

[9]  Hal S. Sider,et al.  Accuracy of Response in Labor Market Surveys: Evidence and Implications , 1983, Journal of Labor Economics.

[10]  W. Kip Viscusi,et al.  Adaptive Responses to Chemical Labeling: Are Workers Bayesian Decision Makers? , 1984 .

[11]  Sherwin Rosen,et al.  Chapter 12 The theory of equalizing differences , 1986 .

[12]  Michael J. Moore,et al.  Workers' Compensation: Wage Effects, Benefit Inadequacies, and the Value of Health Losses , 1987 .

[13]  Michael Moore.  Compensation mechanisms for job risks , 1990 .

[14]  John D. Leeth,et al.  Compensating wage differentials for fatal injury risk in Australia, Japan, and the United States , 1991 .

[15]  W. Viscusi,et al.  The value of risks to life and health , 1993 .

[16]  W. Rogers.  Regression standard errors in clustered samples , 1994 .

[17]  Joni Hersch,et al.  Compensating Differentials for Gender-Specific Job Injury Risks , 1998 .

[18]  W. Viscusi,et al.  Cigarette Smokers as Job Risk Takers , 2000, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[19]  Cigarette Smokers as Job Risk Takers , 2001, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[20]  Joseph E. Aldy,et al.  The Value of a Statistical Life: A Critical Review of Market Estimates Throughout the World , 2003 .

[21]  Dan A. Black,et al.  On the Measurement of Job Risk in Hedonic Wage Models , 2003 .