TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 205, 30 August 1934, Page 6

TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

A MAN'S VALUE. VARIOUS ESTIMATES. (By FRO BONO PUBLICO.) . I remember reading, a year or two ago, an American magazine article in which the writer took to task a statistician who had computed the capital value of every American soldier killed in the war to have been 5000 dollars. He argued that no one could calculate the value of' an individual citizen's life, or even the average value of all the soldiers' lives. .The statistician's contention, he said, was that the United States lost the equivalent of 5000 dollars in capital when a soldier was killed. His own estimate was nearer 50,000 dollars.

The discussion li«us been revived lately in England by a chapter in Mr. Hirst's "Consequences of the War to Great Britain," in which the author gave an estimate of £000 as the economic loss suffered by the country for every soldier killed or incapacitated. The estimate generally quoted is that made by the French actuary, M. Barriol, before the war. •He put the social value of the adult male citizen of the United States at £944, of England £828, of Germany £070, of France £580, of Italy £440 and of Russia £404. These figures, according to the secretary of the Economic Committee of the League of Nations, are below the present monetary values, in view of the reduction of the number of men and the depreciation of currencies. Probably a good many people have tried their hands at calculations of the kind. I had a shot at it for New Zealand seven or eight years ago, with rather startling results. The labour of every man engaged in production in the Dominion I found to be worth approximately £400 a year to the country. The actual value of the individual to the country was somewhere between £Bq,> and £135 a year, and in a working life of forty years, therefore, he would contribute from £3400 to £5400 to the welfare or wealth of the community.

This was very rough calculating, I admit, hut when one got down to testing the various stages of the calculation it 6eemed difficult to reduce the capital figure. At any rate, I couldn't' get down to anything like £1000 as. the value of a man, no matter what deductions and allowances I made. Moreover, an estimate of' about £4000 seemed to be confirmed when I approached the problem from the other side, starting from the accumulated wealth and the actual cost of social and Government service?. I can't go into the details here, but it would be an interesting occupation for those mathematically inclined to work out a figure for themselves, and I should be glad to have their- figures. New Zealanders are a small and relatively wealthy community, and consequently the value of the individual citizen must be comparatively high.