Valuing “ Lives Saved ” vs . “ Life - Years Saved ”

There is long-standing debate whether to count “lives saved” or “life-years saved” when evaluating policies to reduce mortality risk. Historically, the two approaches have been applied in different domains. Environmental and transportation policies have often been evaluated using lives saved, while life-years saved has been the preferred metric in other areas of public health including medicine, vaccination, and disease screening. For benefit-cost analysis, the monetary value of risk reductions can be calculated either by multiplying expected lives saved by the “value per statistical life” (VSL) or by multiplying expected life-years saved by the “value per statistical life-year” (VSLY).