How Much Money is a Human Life Worth?
Five Thousand Dollars, according to the German government. Or at least, that’s how much an Afghan life is worth.
In a gesture whose apparent "generosity" is undermined by its stolidity, the German government is giving $5,000 to “every family that lost a member in a German-ordered airstrike in Afghanistan,” according to the Spiegel Online.
Five thousand dollars is a settlement sum.
In 2009, a group of Afghan farmers, seeking compensation for loved ones lost as a result of German airstrikes,hired a German lawyer to take legal action against the German government. The farmers--through their lawyers--haggled with German officials over an appropriate sum. Figures from $33,000, to 200,000 Euros, to $500,000 were all tossed around and debated.
But according to a bureaucrat in the German Defense Ministry, who ended up having the final say, “$5000 is a suitable amount” for the life of a dead Afghan civilian. Apparently, America pays $2,000 for a lost soul.
There's something Kafkaesque in the legal wrangling--the negotiators' back and forth--of putting a dollar sum on a human life, don't you think?
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Jun '10
Re: How Much Money is a Human Life Worth?
What's so Kafkaesque about haggling over the value of a human life? First there is a big difference between the value you or I place on our lives and the value of a life in general to a society. One approaches infinite and the other not. There is an excellent paper on this very topic done by an economist at the University of Chicago. What makes his evaluation so good is that he determined the premium paid in wages to entice a worker to do a "dangerous" job as opposed to a regular job. The lifetime premium at this dangerous work was then calculated and discounted to present value. It's been a while since I read about this, but what is surprising is that the value of a life in relative terms is not that high. What makes this study so good is that the workers themselves, not some actuary, determine the value of a life in general by their taking on dangerous work at a premium.
May '10
Re: How Much Money is a Human Life Worth?
This is not really the price of a life, since the German's aren't buying a life. What they are buying is silence from the family of those killed. So $5k is what it costs to make the Afghan farmers and their lawyers go away.
Wrongful death suits in the US attempt to set the "value of a live" all the time. I feel for those juries.
Jul '10
Re: How Much Money is a Human Life Worth?
The value of Life is rather low as long as abortion is legal.