Measuring the Value of Life and Limb: Estimating Compensating Wage Differentials Among Workers in Chennai and Mumbai

Policy makers confronted with the need to introduce health and safty regulations often wonder how to value the benifites of these regulations. One way that a monetory value could be placed on reductions in health risks, including risk of death, is through understanding how people are compensated for the different risks they take. This approch reffered to as the compensating wage differentials method, estimates the wage premium a worker would need to be paid to accept a small increase in his/her risk of dying or equivalently what a worker would pay to achieve a small reduction in risk of death. The study is an attempt of obtaining estimates of VSL that reflects Indian risk preference. [SANDEE]