Estimates of the Value of Life Using Air Bag Regulations as a Quasi-Experiment

描述(申请人提供)：许多公共政策旨在延长人们的寿命并降低死亡风险。为了有效地在这些不同的政策之间分配政府支出，有必要从成本效益的角度对这些政策进行评估。进行这样的成本效益计算需要对救生技术的经济价值进行估计(以美元为单位)。这些估计，也被称为统计寿命价值(VSL)，广泛用于卫生保健，以确定特定的医疗或卫生政策 性价比高。为了使这些成本效益计算准确，VSL估计必须准确。之前对VSL的估计是基于观察到的，即死亡风险水平较高的工作往往支付更高的工资。这种经验性的规律性被解释为表明，向工人支付工资溢价是为了诱使他们接受高风险的工作；这种溢价被用来估计VSL。然而，最近出现了相当多的争论，关于什么是真正的VSL，以及这种方法是否能产生准确的估计。这些研究可能不能有效地控制混杂因素，如特定于员工的属性，如动机和能力，或特定于工作的属性，如舒适度和自主性。此外，这些方法估计了“边缘”工人的VSL--在目前的工资率下，他们在高风险工作和安全工作之间无动于衷。对这种边缘工人的VSL的估计不一定能为普通美国人提供关于降低风险的好处的信息。为了解决这些问题，这个项目将使用政府关于安全气囊的政策来评估VSL，作为一种“准实验”。在20世纪90年代政府强制逐步引入安全气囊的过程中，拥有安全气囊的车辆比例在几年内从不到40%上升到100%。将安全气囊添加到汽车模型中时，价格的跃升可以用来估计人口中不同个人的风险降低估值。在该政策的最初几年，安全气囊的价格反映了VSL高于平均水平的美国人降低风险的价值。随着安全气囊变得越来越普遍，价格下降，新价格反映了VSL低于平均水平的个人风险降低的估值。利用不同车辆类型的逐步引入时间表的差异，可以将政策的影响与经济增长和公众对技术接受度的提高等经济因素区分开来。 现有VSL估计的一个重要局限性是，它们是基于年轻人的行为，而医疗支出的主要受益者是老年人。这里使用的方法的一个优点是，汽车购买是由许多不同年龄的人进行的。 因此，可以使用这些数据来衡量VSL在不同年龄组之间的变化。 公共卫生相关性：拟议的研究旨在获得比目前更准确的对延长预期寿命或降低死亡风险的政策的社会效益的估计。NIH、EPA和其他政府机构广泛使用经济学家对此类政策的社会效益的估计，对医疗、医学研究和环境法规等救命支出进行成本效益分析。通过提高这些效益估计的准确性，本研究将有助于提高政府在这些领域决策的准确性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Many public policies are designed to extend people's lives and to reduce the risk of death. To allocate government expenditures across these different policies effectively, it is necessary to evaluate the policies from a cost-benefit perspective. Making such cost-benefit calculations requires estimates (in dollar units) of the economic value of life-saving technologies. These estimates, also referred to as the value of a statistical life (VSL), are used extensively in health care to determine whether specific medical treatments or health polices are cost-effective. For these cost-effectiveness calculations to be correct, it is necessary for the VSL estimates to be accurate. Previous estimates of the VSL are based on the observation that jobs with higher levels of fatality risk tend to pay more. This empirical regularity has been interpreted to indicate that workers are paid a wage premium to induce them to accept risky jobs; this premium has been used to estimate the VSL. Recently, however, considerable debate has arisen as to what the true VSL is and whether this approach produces accurate estimates. These studies may not effectively control for confounding factors such as worker-specific attributes such as motivation and ability or job-specific attributes such as comfort and autonomy. Moreover, these approaches estimate the VSL for a "marginal" worker - one who, at the current wage rates, is indifferent between working in a risky job and a safe job. Estimates of this marginal worker's VSL are not necessarily informative about the benefits of risk reductions for the average American. To address these problems, this project will estimate the VSL using government policies regarding air bags as a "quasi-experiment." Through the government-mandated phase-in of air bags over the 1990s, the fraction of vehicles with air bags increased from less than 40% to 100% over a few years. The jump in prices that occurs when an air bag was added to an automobile model can be used to estimate the valuations of risk reductions for different individuals in the population. In the early years of the policy, the price of an air bag reflected the valuation of risk reductions for an American whose VSL was higher than average. As air bags became more common, the price decreased, and the new price reflected the valuation of risk reductions for an individual whose VSL was lower than average. Using differences in the phase-in schedule across vehicle types, it is possible to disentangle the effects of the policy from economy-wide factors such as economic growth and increases in public acceptance of the technology. One important limitation of existing VSL estimates is that they are based on the behavior of younger individuals, while the primary beneficiaries of medical expenditures are the elderly. One advantage of the approach used here is that automobile purchases are made by individuals at many different ages. Consequently, it is possible to use these data to measure how the VSL varies across age groups. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed study aims to obtain more accurate estimates than currently exist of the social benefits of policies that increase life expectancy or reduce fatality risk. Economists' estimates of the social benefits of such policies are used extensively by the NIH, the EPA, and other government agencies to conduct cost benefit analyses of life-saving expenditures such as medical treatments, medical research, and environmental regulations. By improving the accuracy of these benefit estimates, this study will contribute toward improving the accuracy of government decision-making in these areas.