Why a Life in Belgium Is Valued Three Times Less Than in the USA

According to De Standaard, health economist Dominic Van Dijck of Ghent University offers a carefully phrased reassurance: “it is not how much a life costs, but how much we are prepared to invest to save a life.” It is a comforting distinction—almost philosophical—until one compares how much different countries are actually prepared to “invest.”

In Belgium, that investment translates to roughly €3.5 million. In the United States, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency operates with a “Value of Statistical Life” of around $12 million. One might argue about methodologies, discounting models, or policy frameworks. Or one might simply note that, somewhere between Brussels and Washington, human life appears to triple in value.

The PFAS crisis in Belgium turned this abstract discussion into something far more concrete. PFAS—so-called “forever chemicals”—accumulate in the human body and are associated with cancer, immune disruption, and long-term environmental damage. Around industrial sites in Flanders, particularly linked to 3M, entire communities have been exposed. What followed was not just a public health debate, but a legal one: what is the cost of that damage, and who bears it? The uncomfortable answer is that the system already had a framework in place—and with it, an implicit valuation of harm.

This is where the real divergence emerges, not in science but in legal culture.

Continental Europe operates within a civil law system: codified, structured, and defined from the top down. Legislators draft comprehensive rules, and judges apply them. The system values predictability, coherence, and control. It also tends to fix assumptions in advance—including how damages are calculated and how far liability extends. Once written, these frameworks are remarkably durable. Belgium only replaced its criminal code in 2026, updating legislation that dated back to 1867. Stability is achieved, but evolution is slow.

Some elements endure less out of necessity than convenience. It remains a criminal offence in Belgium to use legitimate foreign noble titles. Officially, this ensures legal clarity. In practice, beyond aristocratic sensitivities, it serves to protect legacy institutions such as the Council of Nobility. When recognition is controlled internally, relevance is preserved. The law, in such cases, does not merely regulate society—it safeguards the structures that define it.

Across the Atlantic, the architecture is fundamentally different. Following the American Revolution, the United States developed its legal order around the common law system. Law is not a fixed code but an evolving body of precedent, shaped case by case. Judges interpret, lawyers argue, and outcomes remain, to a degree, open.

This openness has consequences. It is often said that the United States is a country of lawyers—not as an insult, but as a structural reality. When legal outcomes are not fully predetermined, the ability to argue, reinterpret, and challenge becomes economically valuable. Litigation is not merely a mechanism for resolving disputes; it is a tool for redefining value itself.

This is why compensation in U.S. courts can escalate dramatically. Unlike in rigidly codified systems, damages are not always constrained by predefined schedules. They are contested, expanded, and occasionally multiplied. The value of harm—and by extension, of life—is not simply assigned; it is argued.

The legal profession thrives in such an environment. Firms like Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz illustrate this dynamic vividly. As the Financial Times noted, it is “the law firm that shaped Wall Street and the World.” Founded in 1965 by Herbert Wachtell, Leonard Rosen, George Katz, and Martin Lipton—all graduates of New York University School of Law—the firm emerged in a legal environment that was far from inclusive. They were not outsiders by ability, but by acceptance. As Jewish lawyers, they found themselves unwelcome in the traditional “white shoe” firms that dominated New York at the time. Rather than integrating into the existing hierarchy, they built their own platform—and, in doing so, reshaped the system itself. They pioneered mechanisms such as the poison pill defence and advised on transactions that would redefine corporate America.

Such trajectories are far less common in Belgium and much of Europe. Not due to a lack of talent, but due to a different structural logic. When the law defines outcomes in advance, there is less room—and less incentive—for reinterpretation and innovation. Stability is prioritised; disruption is constrained.

And so we return to the initial observation. Why is a life “worth” three times less in Belgium than in the United States?

Perhaps it is not about intrinsic value at all. Perhaps it is about whether that value is fixed or negotiable. In Belgium, it is largely predefined within a codified system designed to ensure consistency and protect institutional continuity. In the United States, it remains open to argument—subject to reinterpretation, litigation, and change.

One system preserves. The other adapts.

And perhaps this difference extends beyond legal theory. The economic dynamism and technological leadership of the United States may not be entirely disconnected from a legal system that evolves with its participants rather than protecting established elites. A system that allows new actors to challenge assumptions, redefine rules, and expand possibilities will, inevitably, produce different outcomes than one designed primarily to maintain equilibrium.

In that sense, the valuation of life is not just a number. It is a reflection of a deeper choice: between a system that writes the rules once, and one that allows them to be rewritten.