World Death Index: How Much are You Worth?

There is nothing like a number to get you thinking. And these days I've been thinking about how much a life is worth. This morning I sat down with a calculator, scoured news reports and have come up with a few estimates that might put a little perspective on the senseless death of thousands of people. It could be the beginning of something I would like to call the World Death Index.

A few weeks after 2,973people died in the collapse of the World Trade Centers in New York the United States launched a massive global campaign to eradicate terror. While both soldiers and civilians are dying in the conflict, so far 2,710 American soldiers http://www.icasualties.org/oif/ have died in the line of duty while Iraqbodycount.net, an independent news portal that tracks civilian deaths via newspaper reports states that at least 43,546 Iraqi civilians have died in the conflict. The American military does not track casualties of the militants it has reportedly killed.

So if we add up the total American dead (Sept 11th+Military) and divide it by the total number of dead Iraqis it turns out that one American is worth 7.6 Iraqi civilians. The military however, has a different way to measure it. According to the Washington Post, when a civilian is killed by a stray cluster bomb, they doll out cash to the bereaved families to the amount of $2,500. A dead US soldier's family gets about $400,000. So in financial terms, one American soldier is 160 times as valuable as an Iraqi civilian.

But what about Indian civilians? Unfortunately it is difficult to calculate Indian lives based on an American military occupation (the standard unit for these sorts of mathematics) , but luckily new legislation across India is making it easier to put a rupee amount to civilian lives. In the last year farmers across Karnataka have been going through hard times. First there were draughts, then there were floods, and just about every farmer is severely in debt. Many are driven to suicide. According to a state government assessment there have been 777 suicides in total. Naturally it is a big problem that politicians are just now beginning to address by lambasting one another for their failures to the suffering agrarian population. Recently the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has issues a rehabilitation package that is meant to address the suicides. He ha authorized 15.5 crore to go to the families of the farmers (or about $330,000), or about $429 per suffering family.

By this calculation it seems that one American soldier is worth 932 Indian farmers, while a bombed Iraqi civilian is worth about 5.8 Indians. Anyone want to check my math?