Have you ever wondered how much money it would take to replace a family member whilst at the same time leaving you as happy as ever? Neither have I, but researchers at the University of London have and calculated that it would take $220,000 annually to raise someone's happiness to pre-death levels after a spouse dies, $118,000 for a child, $28,000 for a parent, $16,000 for a friend and only $2,000 for a sibling.
This finding is interesting in a number of ways. From an evolutionary perspective, as we are equally related to parents, children and siblings theories of kin selection would probably not expect such large differences in the impact of death. Though quantifying the impact in monetary terms probably misrepresents the actual differences in happiness considering the diminishing returns of, for instance, salary increases beyond a certain level. The "focusing illusion" or "affective forecasting" are also relevant here in that people may anticipate a different level of impact and/or less discrepancy.
putting a price on death
4 comments:
Have only read Michael's sumary of the article, but I don't find the gaps between the compensation for parents, spouses, and children to be that surprising, nor something that needs (or indeed is suited to) an evolotionary explanation. Replacing a spouse would demand more money as they are working, children are dependent so the compensation would be less, and parents... hopefully we're not taking money off them at this stage.
Without throwing something like Kanazawa's unfalsifiable 'savannah' psychology into the mix, it's plain that the insurance companies have had this 'gap' worked into their policies. I've just bought travel insurance today and the compensation for a child is one-fifth of that for an adult.
Let's run with the evolutionary ball for a second, รก la Kanazawa: kids should be worth less (or demand a lower level of compensation) as they can only one carry one copy of our genes, while our spouse is worth more as we can have X number of children and so have 'multiple sets' of our genes out there. Moreover, as we are a K-species (requiring large amounts of parental investment), then it follows that our genetic investment is at great risk if the kids are orphaned at a young age. By extension, if our kids are older, and our partner or ourselves has passed childbearing age, we should have a greater evolutionary return if our partner dies and not our children.
My bugbear with all this is that the evolutionary models throw parsimony out the window, the thinking is Panglossian, and as with false consciousness, it's totally unfalsifiable. Evolution 'explains' everything: As Koestler says, does a theory of everything become a theory of nothing?
Am inclined to agree with Ken especially his wariness about crappy evolutionary "explanations" of which Kanazawa is a master. There are simpler explanations: I love my wife more than I love my brother so whats the big deal? This is just as compelling explanation as making assumptions about the Pleistocene which can't be tested. Darwinism is like the 46A bus, you have to know when to get off. Its funny that some (admittedly not very good) social scientists are jumping on the naive Darwinism bandwagon just as biologists are starting to see a more complex picture emerge.
I agree that evolutionary psychology can be taken too far. Buss has been going a bit overboard of late claiming that men are almost hardwired to murder their wives when they're unfaithful (The Murderer Next Door) and other such unfalsifiable hypotheses seen as if they don't it's because of societal restraints etc. But on the other hand simple predictions have been continually reproduced. The often cited example is grandparental love and investment which decreases as the likelihood of the child being their genetic grandchild reduces due to the possibility of cuckoldry. It would be interesting as Ken indicated to see if the relation's or spouses fecundity and investment potential (in one's genetic heritage) would explain the differences between compensation needed for those of equally related genetically. Evolutionary psychologists would probably believe love is the emotional translation of these factors!
I think I am hardwired to murder evolutionary psychologists. Explain that!
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