Each day millions of Americans go to work knowing that they run the risk of serious injury, illness, or death. Their fears are borne out by statistical evidence showing that work in America is dangerous and getting more so, and that public policies to reverse this trend have largely failed. This alone would be reason to write a book. But occupational safety and health is also a crucible for economic theory. Economists have developed an elaborate analysis of working conditions and their relationship to wages and employment decisions, and they have subjected it to dozens of empirical tests. They even claim to have developed the tools for assigning a dollar value to human lives saved or lost. As I will try to show, however, the theory they employ is fundamentally misguided, the tests are at best inconclusive and ignore massive amounts of counter-evidence, and, as a result, the economics profession has been unable to explain our predicament or help lead us out of it. The implications of this failure extend beyond the problem of workplace safety and extend to all of the issues addressed by contemporary market analysis, since the misguided assumptions that obscure the significance of dangerous working conditions are also in force whenever economists study the interaction between institutions and individual behavior in modern society.

Dangerous work: still a problem

Like the persistence of poverty, discrimination, and rampant inequality, the continuing threat of hazardous working conditions after centuries of economic development represents an indictment of our society.