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Can Protecting Human Health and the Environment Be Justified on Cost‐Benefit Grounds?
Author(s) -
RUTTENBERG RUTH
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1997.tb56893.x
Subject(s) - externality , outcome (game theory) , persuasion , economics , public economics , politics , cost–benefit analysis , microeconomics , business , law , political science , psychology , social psychology
Cost‐benefit analysis, to be accurate, should eliminate externalities and reach out to measure all costs and all benefits associated with a pending program. Clearly, any policy to protect human health and the environment should have more advantages than disadvantages. How these costs and benefits are counted and what is counted are key. The cost‐benefit debate can not be ignored. The benefits to workers; to the community; to local, state, and federal government; and often to the business community as well nearly always exceed costs. The full impact of an individual's death or disabilities can be staggering. It is important to build models and data bases to make the full costs and benefits clear to decision makers and to present these full costs and benefits in academically sound and analytically rigorous ways. Dictionary definitions of cost focus not on dollars, but on sacrifice, distress, pain, and suffering. Likewise, definitions of benefits focus on value and welfare. Cost‐benefit analysis should be changed in two majors ways: (1) how measurements are made and (2) the paradigms used to make measurements.