The social value of risk reduction (SVRR) is the marginal social value of reducing an individual’s fatality risk, as measured by some social welfare function (SWF). This is the linchpin concept for applying social welfare functions to the domain of fatality risk regulation. This Article...

We examine how different welfarist frameworks evaluate the social value of mortality risk-reduction. These frameworks include classical, distributively unweighted cost-benefit analysis — i.e., the “value per statistical life” (VSL) approach — and three benchmark social welfare functions...