A recent tragedy highlights a knotty microeconomic problem. A 14-year-old boy on a farm errand died in a highway accident. The question is, to what extent laws should govern risky actions parents allow — or direct — children to take.
Values are changing. I overheard a discussion during which someone argued strenuously that the boy’s father should be charged with criminal child endangerment. As an old farm boy who did many dangerous things working as an adolescent, including regular driving on public highways, my gut reaction is strongly against such charges.
Neither reaction is inherently right or wrong from a moral perspective. Virtually all societies assign primary responsibility for child protection to parents. Most also curb parental discretion with statutory limits that vary in theory and application between different societies.
For economists, government limits on individual behavior should be guided by the presence or absence of external costs. If I like big steaks but eating them risks early death by heart attack, the pleasure of eating and the pain of premature death principally affect me. Yes, my friends and family would be hurt by my early death, but that is a private matter.
Similarly, according to most economists, people should be allowed to skydive, ride motorcycles without helmets, cut grounding prongs off the cords of their electric drills or run with scissors.
Governments should limit, however, risky acts that may harm others. Driving a Porsche at 120 mph is fun, but endangers other motorists. Smoking cigarettes in closed spaces satisfies tobacco addicts, but may harm the health of others. Chatting on cell phones in city traffic allows drivers to conduct business, but increases the chance of pedestrian injury.
Deciding which acts have such external costs that they merit banning is subjective. You may not drive the Porsche at 120 mph in the United States, but you may on German autobahns. For decades, indoor smoking was legal, but this nation has seen a sea change in the last 30 years. Similar attitude changes have not occurred, however, in many other nations. Some countries ban cell phone use while driving; others do not.
Voluntary acceptance of risk is one thing. An adult choosing to live with a smoking spouse or to ride with an inebriated friend makes an informed, voluntary decision. Children, however, are not capable of such autonomous decisions. When a parent, the person charged with protecting, also is the one choosing to expose the child to harm, there are no clear answers.
Should it be criminal to let a toddler ride without an approved infant seat? To put an infant seat in a front seat with an airbag? To let a 14-year-old drive to town? To let the same adolescent mow a steep ditch bank using an old tractor without a roll bar? To let a 7-year-old in a developing country dodge bulldozers at a landfill in order to pluck out items to be sold for food?
These questions don’t involve money, but they lie at the heart of modern microeconomics. Unfortunately, neither economists nor lawyers can give easy answers.
© 2004 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.