Paying for Kidneys

In a new paper, Gary Becker and graduate student Julio Elias estimate that for a price of $15,000 the shortage of kidneys could be eliminated from live donors.  The risk of death to a live donor is no more than 1 in a 1000.  Combine this with a value of life estimate of $3 million and add in some costs for time off work and so forth and you get the Becker/Elias figure of $15,000.

$15,000 seems too low to me but it probably would since my income is above average. As a robustness check, the authors note that in India a kidney can be had for about $1000 and US per capita income is about 15 times that in India so $15,000 looks to be in the right ballpark.  A similar calculation from Iran, where kidney sales are legal, is also consistent.  In anycase, even if they are off by a factor of 2 the point is well taken that for a modest sum many lives could be saved.  (In fact, dollars would be saved also because transplants are cheaper than dialysis.)

Becker and Elias have a useful response to (so-called) moral objections. Take any argument against kidney sales and apply it to the volunteer army.  Do kidney sales "commodify the body?"  Perhaps, but then the volunteer army commodifies life.  Would kidney sales eliminate altruistic donation?  As the example of Pat Tillman and many others demonstrate people still volunteer for the military for non-monetary reasons.  Are there difficulties for donors to calculate risks?  Again, perhaps, but these also apply to joining the military (and if so we could allow for a cooling-off period for both donating an organ or joining the military, as we do in some states for auto purchases).

If you are not in favor of the volunteer army then Becker and Elias don't have any knock down arguments but I suspect that many people who are against kidney sales also favor the volunteer army and for these people Becker and Elias are posing a consistency challenge.