Our research presents new evidence on 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 health 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, health 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.
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Volume (Year): contributions.5 (2006) Issue (Month): 1 () Pages: Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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Find related papers by JEL classification: J17 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Value of Life; Foregone Income J28 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health K32 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Environmental, Health, and Safety Law
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