IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jbcoan/v15y2024is1p110-126_6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Value of Life in the Social Cost of Carbon: A Critique and a Proposal

Author

Listed:
  • Broome, John

Abstract

In its 2023 revision of the social cost of carbon, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency values people’s lives on the basis of their willingness to pay for them, without applying any distributional weights. It justifies this proposal on grounds of the Kaldor–Hicks criterion, which avoids interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing. But this criterion was discredited 70 years ago. Interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing cannot truly be avoided, and they should be used to determine distributional weights. One way of doing so is to identify as a numeraire a good that brings equal wellbeing to each person. A healthy life year is a reasonable, though only approximate, candidate for such a good. This article presents the point of view of a philosopher, regarding the practice of economists from outside the discipline.

Suggested Citation

  • Broome, John, 2024. "The Value of Life in the Social Cost of Carbon: A Critique and a Proposal," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(S1), pages 110-126, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jbcoan:v:15:y:2024:i:s1:p:110-126_6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2194588824000216/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jbcoan:v:15:y:2024:i:s1:p:110-126_6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/bca .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.