Weighing the Value of an Infantry Soldier's Life

In substituting heavily armored combat vehicles at a cost of $170,000 each for lighter, $50,000 vehicles during the 2000s, the U.S. Army reduced infantry deaths by 0.04-0.43 per month at an estimated cost per life saved that is below the $7.5 million commonly accepted "value of a statistical life," say Chris Rohlfs of Syracuse University and Ryan Sullivan of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. However, the Army's subsequent replacement of about 9,000 of those new vehicles with even more heavily armored vehicles, costing $600,000 each, did not appreciably reduce fatalities and was not cost-effective for less-active infantry units, according to the researchers' analysis of Army data.