Abstract
This essay discusses justice issues surrounding occupational safety and health and assesses the ethical legitimacy of regulatory cost benefit analysis when the costs in question involve the risks and realization of workplace injury and fatalities. The current “value of a statistical life” for legal-regulatory purposes is 13.1 million dollars. Economists claim that this figure does not “really” represent an attempt to value any particular life. But the obvious purpose of even calculating the number is to provide a statistical justification for saying “no” to rules requiring safer work.
The moral-ethical dilemma of work related injury and death remains a central problem of workplace law. In 2022, 5,486 employees were killed on the job in the United States; and 120,000 workers died from occupational diseases.During a time of modern, putatively-safe working conditions,these statistics seem almost incredible.
Regulatory “weighing” is conducted by economists, with no conscious input from workers who are exposed to workplace risks of harm and death. Those who argue that strong emotional responses by workers to “fearsome risks” are irrational because of the risks’ putatively low probabilities of leading to harm are typically not exposed to such risks, and may suffer from an upper class “anti-safety bias.” The ethical and democratic problem posed is whether the persons asking questions about, and setting policies on, risk have sufficient “skin in the game” to be asking the questions or evaluating the answers. The essay also discusses the EU’s “Vision Zero” goal of killing no one in the workplace.
Recommended Citation
Michael C. Duff,
The Value of a Statistical Life: From Skin in the Game to Vision Zero,
69
St. Louis U. L.J.
(2025).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lj/vol69/iss2/9