Despite its status as an advanced industrial nation, the United States has some unusual characteristics. For example, while its health care system is the most expensive in the world, its citizens are neither healthier nor do they live longer than citizens in other countries. In addition, while the U.S. is considered among the safest countries, deaths from gunshot wounds are staggeringly high. In 2000, the U.S. recorded close to 11,000 firearm homicides and more than 16,000 firearm suicides. The European Union -- an area with a population approximately 25% higher than that of the U.S. -- reported fewer than 1,300 firearm homicides for the same year. In Japan, the number was 22. [The EU figures pre-date the 10-country expansion which took place on May 1, 2004.]
Jean Lemaire, a professor of insurance and actuarial science at Wharton, argues that these facts should be looked at in tandem. In a recent paper entitled, "The Cost of Firearm Deaths in the United States: Reduced Life Expectancies and Increased Insurance Costs," to be published in the September 2005 issue of The Journal of Risk and Insurance, Lemaire works through the medical and financial impact of firearms on American society. The results are eye opening.
Researchers who study firearm violence in the U.S. come at their subject from a number of perspectives, including the most obvious -- medical costs. Yet it is the other costs that are "more difficult to quantify," Lemaire writes. "They include the cost of public resources devoted to law enforcement, private investment by individuals in protection and avoidance, lost productivity of victims and changes in the quality of life, limits on freedoms to live or work in certain places, restrictions on residential and commercial location decisions, limitations in hours of operations of retail establishments, emotional costs to the forced adaptation to increased risk, and the cost of pain and fear.
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