A Markov Process Model of Work-Life Expectancies by Educational Attainment Based on Labor Force Activity in 1997-98

This paper considers two alternative legal structures that exist in some of the fifty states that can provide a measure of economic damages to parents in cases involving the wrongful death of minor children. In a traditional wrongful death action, the surviving parents sue for their own losses. With the death of a minor child, those losses would be future loss of financial support and loss of household production. Any calculation of those loss elements calls for speculative assumptions about the future behavior of the adult child. The authors point out that another approach they have advocated in the past, the parental investment approach, has been largely rejected by the legal system. The two structures considered in this paper derive from (1) survival actions that allow recovery for the lost earnings stream of the decedent child, with or without deduction for the personal maintenance expenditures of the child and (2) special provisions in some wrongful death acts that allow recovery for "lost accumulations to an estate." Both provisions are described in detail, with examples of states using those provisions. Several legal decisions that provide insight into these legal structures are also considered, along with an important Idaho Supreme Court decision forbidding consideration of lost accumulations to an estate in Idaho.