We always hear about pretty arbitrary compensation settlement – mostly from the United States. Sometimes it’s very low (for example when some soldier or a civilian gets killed in a war) and sometimes it’s huge sums.
But have you ever wondered how much a human life is actually worth? A lot of people might actually be offended by the question, but everything and everybody has a price. The idea behind compensation is, of course, not only to pay for the earning potential of a lost spouse, but also to help the survivors to forget their grief. So a compensation based simply on income of the deceased person doesn’t quite cut it.
Enter Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee. They collected data about the overall mental health of 10000 Britons since 1991, and tried to determine the amount of money that raised a person’s mental health score to the same amount that a loved one’s death had lowered it.
The **annual** amounts they came up with are:
* US$220000 for a spouse
* US$118000 for a child
* US$28000 for a parent
* US$16000 for a friend
* US$2000 for a sibling
Oswald and Powdthavee added that some people are harder hit than others; this could double the amounts.
(Via the [Scientific American](http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=FDC941A8-E7F2-99DF-32045D3D39FE7ABD&ref=rss).)
