As the war in Iraq surges on, the costs incurred by the United States continue to rise. Military operations alone cost the nation $251 billion through last December, and that number is expected to double if the war runs a few more years.

But this amount doesn’t take into account the collateral impact on oil prices, economic growth and mounting debt interest. Some economists are now adding a dollar value to each life lost in combat, and in turn, including life-value to the cost of the war.

“The economics profession in general is paying more attention to the cost of lives cut short or curtailed by injury and illness,” said David Gold, an economist from The New School, founded in 1918 as an economic and education think tank. Gold thinks putting a value on a person’s life has been encouraged by debates centering around topics like tobacco use.

History

In past American wars, a soldier who was killed or wounded in battle was typically thought of as a sacrifice, not a cost. The deaths were the inevitable consequence in achieving a victory. The victory was the benefit that offset the cost of war; therefore, the cost of death.

The idea of applying a dollar value to a lost life picked up in 2002 as President Bush moved the nation toward war. William D. Nordhaus, a Yale economist, was the first to bring up the subject in a pre-war publication in which he called the upcoming conflict a “giant roll of the dice.”

“We are doing this research because the Iraq war is so contentious,” said Nordhaus, who believes the total incurred costs could reach $1.9 trillion if the future secondary costs are tallied.

Cost of life

“If you take the strictest definition, you could argue that the value of a life is the opportunity cost of losing that life, or what is given up by not having them,” says NIU economics professor Jeremy Groves. “In other words, we are asking ourselves the value of everything this person would have produced in the economy if they had not been killed in action.”

Researchers have used that method, adding in costs of disability payments and the lifelong care of veterans in the Veterans Administration hospital for the severely injured, which is roughly 20 percent of the 160,000-plus wounded. With these costs taken into consideration, the war’s actual cost is already moving near the $1 trillion mark.

New method, new problems

But Groves warns there are several problems with attempting to put a dollar amount on a person’s life. These problems include the cost of the non-tangible items present in a person’s life and the loss involved in future generations.

“Assume that Jane Doe is killed in action and we value her total expected output at $6 million. What about the two children we could expect her to have, and the two children each of those children could be expected to have and so on.”

Placing a set value on life is a difficult task, and the question of if it should be done at all is even more difficult to answer.

“If we place too high a value, then even the Revolutionary War was not worth it in terms of the costs and benefits,” says Groves. “But if we place too low a value, then we are not getting a true measure of the costs of any war or conflict.”