valuing life: $4-6m

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Oct 6 06:55:27 PDT 1999


[I love economists when they get all empirical.]

"The Benefits of Reducing Gun Violence: Evidence from

Contingent-Valuation Survey Data"

BY: JENS LUDWIG

Georgetown University

PHILIP J. COOK

Duke University

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Paper ID: NBER Working Paper No. 7166

Date: June 1999

Contact: JENS LUDWIG

Email: Mailto:ludwigj at gunet.georgetown.edu

Postal: Georgetown University

3600 N St, NW (Suite 200)

Washington, DC 20057 USA

Phone: (202)687 4997

Fax: (202)687 5544

Co-Auth: PHILIP J. COOK

Email: Mailto:cook at pps.duke.edu

Postal: Duke University

Durham, NC 27708 USA

Paper Requests:

Full-Text Availability at http://www.nber.org/wwp.html Papers

can be downloaded online for $5. Hard copies are $10 plus

$10.00/order outside the USA. Prepayment required. NBER orders:

Mailto:orders at nber.org Checks, Mastercard, Visa and American

Express to 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138.

Phone:(617)868-3900. Fax:(617)349-3955. For NBER Subscriptions

Mailto:subs at nber.org or write to "Subscriptions" at address

above.

ABSTRACT:

This paper presents the first attempt to estimate the benefits

of reducing crime using the contingent-valuation (CV) method. We

focus on gun violence, a crime of growing policy concern in

America. Our data come from a national survey in which we ask

respondents referendum-type questions that elicit their

willingness-to-pay (WTP) to reduce gun violence by 30 percent.

We estimate that the public's WTP to reduce gun violence by 30

percent equals $23.8 billion, or $750,000 per injury. Our

estimate implies a statistical value of life ($4.05 to $6.25

million) that is quite consistent with those derived from other

methods.

JEL Classification: D8, J17, H51



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list