NCJ Number
196784
Journal
Future of Children Volume: 12 Issue: 2 Dated: Summer/Fall 2002 Pages: 87-99
Date Published
2002
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This document describes several methods for estimating the costs of gun violence.
Abstract
Even though gun violence has a disproportionate impact on the poor, it imposes costs on the entire socioeconomic spectrum through increased taxes, decreased property values, limits on choices of where to live and visit, and safety concerns. Most of the costs of gun violence, especially violence against children, result from concerns about safety. These are not considered by the traditional public health approach to estimating costs, which focuses on medical expenses and lost earnings. The total costs of gun violence to society are approximately $100 billion per year, of which about $15 billion is attributable to gun violence against youth. The costs of gun violence are more widely distributed across the population than victimization statistics would suggest. The “willingness-to-pay” (WTP) framework is used to estimate the total costs of gun violence. This method assesses how much Americans would be willing to pay to reduce the risk of gun violence. People’s “willingness to pay” to reduce the risk of gunshot injury presumably depends on how that risk affects them, their families, and their communities. The WTP approach to benefit-cost analysis leads to a different picture of the monetary costs of gun violence from the standard public health “cost-of-illness” (COI) approach. The COI approach defines the costs of gun violence as the medical expenses incurred by victims plus lost productivity. This does not take into account the subjective value of safety, concern about others’ welfare, and the costs of prevention and avoidance, which are captured in WTP. The COI framework is inappropriate for evaluating public programs to reduce gun violence. Its application to children’s gunshot injuries has the effect of understating their cost to society. The overall costs of gun violence to society is quantified using the “contingent valuation” (CV) method to value society’s willingness to pay to reduce gun violence. The estimates suggest that the American public is willing to pay $24.5 billion to reduce gun violence by 30 percent. 3 tables, 32 endnotes