"I want to say up front of course that this is very, very difficult, and I want to defend economists by saying we certainly recognize that there are important emotional or subjective values to life, and you can't put dollar values on everything," says Dr. Walden, a North Carolina Cooperative Extension specialist. "I don't want people to be confused and think that there are economists who are saying that we can put a dollar value on a life and everything. We recognize you can't.

"But ... there are situations where you have to do that -- ... [for example in] a trial where someone has been injured or a life lost and beneficiaries or relatives of that person are seeking some money to compensate for that loss, well you have to come up with a value," he says. "Or ... when the government passes regulation that may be costly to businesses and others, well, we'd like some measure of ... the value of those regulations, especially if you are improving safety and reducing the loss of life.

"So it is important sometimes to come up with some dollar value, and generally what economists do in approaching this is to say, 'Let's put a value on a life equal to what that person will earn over their remaining years of life.' Or if you are dealing with someone who is just entering the workforce, you would look at an estimate of their lifetime income. And when this is done the latest estimates show that these numbers can be up in the millions of dollars -- for some people they can as high as $4, $5 or $10 million. Again I want to emphasize that this is not to say that this captures all values of life, but these are numbers that are used in cost-benefit analysis as well as in trials," he concludes.