THE VALUE OF A STATISTICAL LIFE - A COMPARISON OF 2 APPROACHES

Using an original data set, this article presents the first effort to compare systematically the values of a statistical life obtained from the two main methodologies existing in the literature-the revealed-preference approach (wage-risk analysis) and the contingent-valuation approach-applied to the same sample of individuals. A survey was conducted in the Montreal area with a questionnaire containing two series of questions: one set of contingent-valuation questions and one set of questions pertaining to the information necessary for performing a wage-risk study. The results show that the values of a statistical life obtained from each method are different from each other.