The United States Environmental Protection Agency has determined that the value of a human life is more than $9 million US Dollars (USD). Along similar lines, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has valued the human life at about $8 million USD, and the U.S. Department of Transportation set its bar lower at about $6 million USD.
More facts about the value of a life:
"Value of life" estimations are commonly made in statistics, and there are a number of criteria used. For instance, when coming up with the value of a "Consumer Unit" (CU) — i.e., a person's value — statisticians consider everything from age to family income to the ways in which people are educated.
Globally, insurance companies have their own value of life standards as well. Generally, when considering whether to cover a new treatment, they decide based on whether the treatment will provide one year of "quality life" per $50,000 USD or less. This is disturbing to some economists who have calculated that to have a year of a "quality life" you need at least $129,000 USD.
To put these values in perspective, the average trafficked human costs about $90 USD.
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