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What is the worth of a life? This essential and disturbing question has no simple answer. In fact, if we ask the matter in certain ways, it might not have an answer at all. What is the worth of my life to me? We might say that it’s worth everything I own and more, even if it is necessary to borrow, steal, or acquire anything by any means possible. However, if this means leaving my family bankrupt, some might decide not to pay any price to save their own life. Clearly, the answer depends on everyone.
Similarly, we evaluate the value of the lives of our loved ones. But this approach doesn’t lead us to a clear conclusion. However, it does help us recognize that, in a societal context, we would probably offer significant resources—i.e., money—to save lives. For example, investing millions in improving a road might, statistically, save some lives. If a life is invaluable, then we would do nothing but improve roads. (This is just an example. Feel free to substitute your favorite if you don’t like it.)
There is another approach to looking at this issue that is also more in line with the decisions we make every day. Since we are all going to die eventually, no life can be saved permanently. What we are doing is increasing life expectancy—and potentially its quality—though let’s not complicate the matter for now. How much are we willing to pay to increase our life expectancy by one year? Certainly not huge amounts of money. No, at least if we are talking about raising the age from 45 to 46 years from now on. If we are talking about increasing the age from 0 to 1 year, then we return to the reasoning of the previous paragraph, although in a somewhat more moderate way.
This is the core of the matter. Most decisions that involve saving lives are not focused on the imminence of the result (except in catastrophic situations) but on prolonging life expectancy by avoiding illness or accidents. And now we are no longer so willing to pay. In fact, some people give up years of life expectancy for harmful habits such as smoking a few cigarettes a day. Others take more risks than necessary by driving instead of taking the train because the slight increase in the probability of having an accident does not compensate for the comfort of our vehicle, or we decide to explore the mountains, facing greater hazards than if we were to visit a museum. This is how we are; it seems that if we do not do something more with our lives besides simply living, then life is not worth living.
And what we do not want for ourselves, we do not necessarily want for society. We can invest more in improving roads but can’t spend the entire budget on it. There must be a balance, leaving resources for other needs. Briefly, one can—having the right data—calculate how many years of life expectancy can be saved by investing X funds in a specific policy and compare this with other uses of the money. If the purpose is saving lives, we simply allocate resources where more years of life are saved. This should not be taken too literally; there are many other factors to consider, but I would rather not complicate the issue too much. That said, since we choose to spend money on things that are not directly saving years of life, we are implicitly saying that X money spent on those other things provides us with more satisfaction than the years of life that could be saved with that same quantity if they were spent on prolonging life. Of course, these decisions are deeply personal and vary widely according to each individual and each society.
The reality is that the value of a life cannot be determined in absolute terms. It depends on cultural, personal, economic and social contexts. Just as an individual may value his or her life infinitely, a society must juggle with limited resources and unlimited needs. Moreover, decisions about how much to invest in saving or prolonging lives are further complicated by issues of justice, equity and ethics. These are questions that societies have wrestled with for centuries and will continue to grapple with as long as they exist. While we may not find a definitive answer that applies universally, the very act of asking “how much is a life worth?” forces us to consider deeply what we value, how we distribute resources, and how we define the life we want for ourselves and others.
Finally, as we consider how to value a life, we also reflect on the nature of our humanity and the principles we wish to guide our decisions, individually and collectively. Every decision on this issue reflects a narrative about who we are and what we aspire to be. In this sense, the question of the value of a life is as revealing as it is challenging, and it will remain central to our ethical and moral deliberations.
Translated by Lina Salazar
Claudia Muro
She is student of the Master of Advanced Studies in Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid
