EPA drops policy that values young lives over elderly

BALTIMORE — A Bush administration policy to base some regulations on a calculation that the life of each person older than 70 should be valued less than the life of a younger person has antagonized older Americans and environmental groups, and it has stirred tensions among federal agencies.

Instead of the traditional assumption that all lives saved from cleaner air are worth the same, administration officials in two environmental studies included an alternative method that used two values, $3.7 million for the life of a person younger than 70 and $2.3 million for an older person, a 37 percent difference.

Critics call the policy the "senior death discount" and say the administration is turning on older Americans as a rationale to weaken environmental regulations.

Thursday, Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said her agency had never applied the policy in its decisionmaking and never would.

"The senior discount factor has been stopped," Whitman told reporters at a meeting here. "It has been discontinued. EPA will not, I repeat, not, use an age-adjusted analysis in decisionmaking."

John D. Graham, the regulations administrator at the Office of Management and Budget who has been the champion of the policy, said the calculation would not be used because it was based on an old study. Graham insisted he was committed to the principle of analyzing how many years of life would be added by a particular measure, not simply the number of lives.

He has proposed that all agencies' cost-benefit calculations include the "life expectancy" method and the simpler "statistical lives" approach.

"My instinct has always been to present policymakers and the public with both perspectives, so you can get a sense of the difference," he said.

The life-expectancy approach could bolster the case for health measures that benefit children, Graham said, and in some cases it could help the elderly.

"It can distinguish a regulation that may extend senior citizens' life by five or 10 years, compared to a regulation that will extend their life by only one year," he said.

A spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, Trent Duffy, made clear that in considering the cost-benefit calculations the administration should not be seen as insensitive.