What is statistical life value and how is it different from net worth?

Statistical life value (SLV) is the present value of your future earned income — what your career is worth today as a financial asset. Net worth is what you own today (assets minus debts). SLV is forward-looking; net worth is backward-looking. A 28-year-old MD-PhD with $300K of student debt has a negative net worth and a $7M+ statistical life value because the latter captures the 35 years of high earnings ahead. The SLV framing is what actuaries, life-insurance underwriters, wrongful-death attorneys, and economists use to value the asset that is your career — and it’s usually the largest asset on your honest balance sheet until you’re in your mid-50s.

Why does the calculator use a real (inflation-adjusted) discount rate?

Because the income growth input is also real — the math stays consistent. Mixing nominal growth with real discount (or vice versa) double-counts inflation and produces wrong PVs. The actuarial standard is to run the entire model in real terms: real growth (your career path beyond inflation) discounted at a real rate (T-bond yield minus inflation expectations, usually 1.5-2%, but conservatively 4-5% to account for income uncertainty). If you want nominal dollars, add expected inflation to both inputs (e.g. 3.5% real growth → 6% nominal at 2.5% inflation, 5% real discount → 7.5% nominal). The PV will be the same.

Why 60 % as the life-insurance floor?

Because life insurance replaces income, not net worth, and 60 % of statistical life value is the empirical floor that actuaries use as the ‘maximum reasonable insurable interest’ benchmark. Carriers will issue more — 100 % of SLV is achievable for high earners with clean health profiles — but they’ll push back on coverage above the SLV ceiling because there’s no underlying replacement value. The 60 % floor is the conservative number: enough coverage to replace the majority of your earnings stream for dependents, without the moral-hazard / cost-prohibitive issues at higher coverage tiers. A more rigorous answer pairs the SLV calculator with the dedicated Life Insurance Needs Calculator (DIME method).

What about the income I’ll earn but never see (taxes, retirement contributions)?

The SLV calculator uses gross income because that’s the canonical actuarial input. Tax-effected SLV (using net of taxes) is roughly 60-75 % of gross SLV depending on your bracket, and is the right number for some questions (replacement-income calculations) but not others (wrongful-death awards, which use gross because the family loses the gross stream, not the net). For most personal-finance uses, run the calc on gross income and mentally adjust by your effective tax rate when comparing the output to net-need numbers. The Tax Bracket Calculator handles the conversion if you need it precisely.

Why is the PV lower than the nominal sum of future earnings?

Because $100K received in year 30 isn’t worth $100K today — it’s worth $100K / (1.05)^30 = $23,138 at a 5 % discount. Time value of money compounds in reverse for future cash flows: each year further out gets discounted more heavily. At a 5 % discount over 30 years, PV is roughly 60-70 % of nominal lifetime earnings. The discount-drag row in the result surfaces this gap explicitly. If you set the discount rate to 0 %, PV equals nominal lifetime earnings — useful for ‘how much will I earn in total’ framing but not for ‘what is my career worth as an asset.’

Is this number the same as ‘value of a statistical life’ (VSL) used in regulation?

No — different concept, similar name. VSL is a public-policy number (~$10-13M in 2026 US regulatory analysis) representing what people collectively pay to avoid small risks of death, used by EPA / FDA / DOT to evaluate safety regulations. SLV (this calculator) is your individual human-capital asset value — what your specific earnings stream is worth at present. VSL applies population-wide; SLV is personal. The two numbers diverge by roughly 3-5× because VSL incorporates non-economic value (life enjoyment, etc.) that personal SLV ignores. Don’t conflate the two — wrongful-death lawyers use SLV; OSHA economists use VSL.

How sensitive is the output to the growth-rate assumption?

Very. At 35 years remaining, going from 2 % to 6 % real growth nearly triples the PV. Most people overestimate their career growth — the median worker’s real wage growth peaks around age 45 and declines slightly after. If you’re in a steep-trajectory field (engineering, medicine, finance, law early-career) 5-7 % real for 10-15 years is plausible, then taper to 1-3 %. For most workers, 2-3 % real is honest. Run two scenarios — your best-case 5 % and your conservative 2 % — and split the difference for a more honest planning number.

Why does the discount rate matter so much?

Because it’s a multiplicative compounding force — small changes propagate over decades. At 30 years remaining, going from 4 % to 6 % discount cuts PV by ~30 %. The actuarial standard is 4-5 % real (T-bond yield minus inflation expectations); using a higher rate (e.g. expected stock returns ~7 % real) is wrong because future earnings aren’t risk-free assets but are also not equity-correlated. The 5 % default is conservative and matches the IRS Section 7520 rate band most of the time. Use a lower rate (3 %) if you want the higher PV that life-insurance underwriters often quote; use a higher rate (6-7 %) if you’re in a volatile / cyclical field where future earnings carry meaningful uncertainty.

Should I use this number to negotiate salary?

Indirectly. The SLV doesn’t change how a hiring manager values you — they’re paying market for the role, not your statistical worth. But it changes how you should think about offers. A $5K cut in starting salary at age 30 isn’t a $5K problem — it’s a $5K × (PV multiplier of 30 yrs at your growth + discount) ≈ $80-120K problem in lifetime PV terms. Run the calc with $120K vs $115K starting income, same other inputs — the PV gap is shocking. Same logic in reverse: a 4 % raise that compounds is worth far more than its first-year nominal value suggests. Use SLV to make compounding-aware comp decisions, not to negotiate from.

Does my education / training count as part of statistical life value?

It’s already priced in via the income input. Higher education + specialized training raise your annual earnings above what an untrained worker earns; that earnings premium is the financial return on your education. If you want to isolate the ‘value of your degree’ specifically, run the SLV calc twice — once with your actual income, once with the median income for someone with only a high-school education ($45K). The PV difference is the financial return on every year and dollar you spent on education, capitalized. For most college-educated knowledge workers, that delta is $1.5-3M+.

What does AI replacement risk do to this number?

It depends entirely on which side of the productivity equation you’re on. Workers whose income comes from tasks AI can substitute (basic copywriting, simple legal review, routine analysis) face downward income growth or career truncation — set incomeGrowth to 0 % or negative, or shorten remainingWorkYears, to model that scenario. Workers whose income comes from AI-augmented productivity or AI-resistant skills (relationship-driven roles, physical trades, creative/strategic judgment, deep expert work) face higher income growth — bump incomeGrowth +1 to +2 %. The Statistical Life Value calculator is the right place to model this; the AI Job Replacement Risk Calculator handles the inverse question (how exposed is my specific role).

Can I run this for a stay-at-home parent or non-earning spouse?

Yes — input the imputed economic value of the unpaid work. Replacement childcare + household management + logistics in markets like SF / NY / DC costs $40-80K/yr; in lower-cost regions $25-45K/yr. Use that as the ‘annualIncome’ input. The output is the statistical economic worth of the unpaid contribution to the household — the right number for life-insurance sizing on a stay-at-home parent, who absolutely needs coverage even though they’re not formally employed. The SLV calc is one of the few places you can get that figure cleanly.

FinanceFree · No signup · 180K+/month

Statistical Life Value Calculator — Present Value of Your Future Earnings

Drop your age, current income, expected income growth, remaining work years, and a real discount rate. Calculator returns your statistical economic worth — the present value of every dollar you will earn until retirement, the discount drag time-value imposes on those nominal dollars, your final-year projected income, your worth as a multiple of current income, and the actuarial life-insurance floor (60 % of PV). The same human-capital math actuaries use to set wrongful-death awards and life-insurance underwriting limits — exposed for the question every working person eventually asks but rarely runs the numbers on.

Instant result
Private — nothing saved
Works on any device
AI insight included

Reviewed by CalcBold EditorialLast verified May 4, 2026Methodology

Current age

Your age today. Combined with remaining work years, sets the implied retirement age. The earlier you are in your career, the higher the PV (more years of compounding earnings ahead).

Current annual income (gross)

Gross W-2 / 1099 income before taxes. Use your real 2025 number, not an aspirational target. The PV scales linearly — doubling income doubles statistical worth at the same growth + discount assumptions.

Expected annual income growth

Real (inflation-adjusted) annual growth in earnings. US median earnings grew ~3.5%/yr nominal historically; real growth ~1-2%. High-growth tracks (tech, finance, medicine in mid-career) hit 6-10%; flat fields (teaching, public service late-career) average 1-2%. Negative growth is valid for downshift / phased-retirement scenarios.

Remaining work years

How many years until you stop earning the income above. Standard US retirement target 65 (so 30 yrs at age 35); FIRE-track folks aim 45-55 (so 10-20 yrs); academic / medical folks often work to 70+ (35+ yrs at age 35). The PV is sensitive to this — 30 vs 35 years adds ~10% even at moderate growth.

Real discount rate

The rate at which future dollars are discounted to today. Conservative actuarial standard: 4-5% real (matches long-run T-bond yields net of inflation). Higher discount rate = lower PV (today's dollars more valuable). Use 0% only if you want gross undiscounted lifetime earnings.

Embed builderDrop the Life Value on your site →Free widget · 3 sizes · custom theme · auto-resizes · no signupGet embed code

What This Calculator Does

The Statistical Life Value Calculator answers the question every working person eventually asks but rarely runs the numbers on: how much is my career actually worth, expressed as a single dollar number on today’s balance sheet? Drop your age, current income, expected real income growth, remaining work years, and a real discount rate. The calculator returns your statistical economic worth — the present value of every dollar you will earn until retirement — plus the discount drag time-value imposes on those nominal dollars, your final-year projected income, your worth as a multiple of current income, and the actuarial life-insurance floor (60 % of PV).

This is the same human-capital math actuaries use to set wrongful-death awards, life-insurance underwriting ceilings, and corporate key-person policies. For most people the SLV is the largest asset on their honest balance sheet until their mid-50s — usually larger than their home equity, retirement accounts, and brokerage combined. Most online calculators that claim to compute “lifetime earnings” just multiply current income by remaining years and stop. That is wrong: a dollar earned in year 30 is not worth a dollar today, and ignoring discount drag overstates statistical worth by 30-50 % at typical discount rates.

The Math — Growing Annuity, Real Terms

Each future year’s income gets two adjustments. Growth: this year’s salary compounds at your expected real growth rate g — most workers 2-3 % real, steep-trajectory fields 5-7 % through mid-career. Discount: that future amount gets divided by (1 + r)^tto express it in today’s dollars. The actuarial standard for the discount rate is 4-5 % real (T-bond yield minus inflation), which keeps the math conservative without ignoring time-value entirely.

The model is run in real (inflation-adjusted) terms throughout — both growth and discount inputs are real rates. This avoids double-counting inflation, which is the most common SLV mistake (mixing nominal growth with real discount produces wildly inflated PVs). If you want nominal output, add expected inflation to both inputs equally — the PV stays the same.

A Worked Example — “A 35-yr-old earning $120K”

Suppose you’re 35, earn $120K, expect 3.5 % real growth over 30 remaining work years, and discount at 5 % real:

Year 1 income: $120,000
Final-year (age 65) projected income at 3.5 % growth: ~$329,000
Total nominal earnings over 30 years: ~$6.2M
Present value at 5 % discount: ~$2.95M
Discount drag: ~$3.25M (52 % of nominal lost to time-value)
Coverage as multiple of current income: 24.6× income— well above the 10× rule-of-thumb because you’re mid-career with high remaining horizon
Implied life-insurance floor (60 % of PV): ~$1.77M

The verdict line says “Your statistical economic worth: $2.95M.” The action implied: when you see a $5K raise vs. a $5K bonus, the raise compounded over 30 years is worth ~$80-100K in PV terms — an order of magnitude more than the bonus. SLV-aware decisions favor the compounding side of every comp choice.

When This Is Useful

Six high-value moments. Salary negotiation framing.A $5K cut at age 30 isn’t a $5K problem — it’s an $80-120K problem in lifetime PV terms once the compounding is computed. Run the calc with the offer vs. the counter to see the real gap. Life-insurance sizing. The 60 % SLV floor is the actuarial bridge to the DIME-method calculator — they should agree within 15-25 %; if they don’t, one of the input assumptions is off. Career-decision valuation. Considering a downshift, sabbatical, or career switch? Run the calc twice — once with the current trajectory, once with the new one — and the PV delta is the actual financial cost (or gain) of the decision in capitalized terms. Education-ROI question. Run the calc with your actual income, then again with the median high-school-only income ($45K). The PV gap is the financial return on every year and dollar you spent on education, capitalized. AI exposure pressure-test. Workers whose income comes from tasks AI can substitute should model lower growth or shorter remaining years to see the PV impact. Workers in AI-resistant or AI-augmenting roles can model higher growth — but the honest answer is usually somewhere in between. Wrongful-death context.If you’re ever in the position of evaluating an estate settlement, the SLV is the canonical economic-loss number — the amount that replaces the lost income stream the survivors expected to receive.

Common Mistakes

Mixing nominal and real rates.The single most common SLV mistake. If your income-growth input is “3 % above inflation” (real), your discount rate must also be real (e.g. 5 % real T-bond proxy). If you use a nominal growth (5 % including inflation), use a nominal discount (~7 %). Mixing the two double-counts inflation and produces wrong PVs by 30-60 %.
Over-estimating future income growth. Most people set growth to 5-6 % real, projecting their best recent year forward. Median worker real wage growth peaks around age 45 and declines slightly after. For most workers, 2-3 % real is honest. Steep tracks (engineering, medicine, finance, law early-career) hit 5-7 % real for 10-15 years then taper. Run a conservative scenario (2 %) and an optimistic one (5 %) and split the difference for honest planning.
Using the wrong discount rate.Using expected stock-market returns (~7 % real) is wrong because future earnings aren’t risk-free assets but also aren’t equity-correlated. The IRS Section 7520 rate band (currently 4-5 % real) is the actuarial standard. Use lower (3 %) for life-insurance underwriter PV; higher (6-7 %) for cyclical / volatile industries with meaningful future earnings uncertainty.
Confusing SLV with VSL.Different numbers, similar names. SLV is your individual human-capital asset value (~$2-5M typical). VSL is the public-policy “value of statistical life” (~$10-13M in 2026 US regulatory analysis) used by EPA / FDA / DOT to evaluate safety regulations. The numbers diverge by 3-5× because VSL incorporates non-economic life enjoyment that personal SLV ignores. Don’t conflate the two.
Forgetting to insure the unpaid earner. A stay-at-home parent has a real statistical worth — the imputed economic value of replacement childcare + household management + logistics in your market. $40-80K/yr in expensive metros, $25-45K/yr in lower-cost regions. Run the SLV calc with that imputed income to size life insurance on a non-working spouse correctly. Most calculators ignore this entirely.
Treating SLV as a fixed number.It isn’t — it’s sensitive to every input. Re-run after major life events (career switch, retirement-target shift, large income change) and every 3-5 years between events. The 35-yr-old’s $2.95M SLV doesn’t describe their 50-yr-old self — that person has 15 years left, lower growth, and an SLV closer to $1-1.5M. The trajectory matters more than the snapshot.

Related Calculators

After computing statistical worth, the natural pair is the Life Insurance Needs Calculator — the 60 % SLV floor surfaced here is the actuarial bridge to the DIME-method coverage number. The final-year projected income is the right input for the Retirement Savings Calculator — the age-65 target only holds if your savings rate matches the income trajectory. SLV assumes the income trajectory holds; the AI Job Replacement Risk Calculator is the sanity check on whether your assumed remaining work years and growth rate are realistic for your specific role. And once you internalize the compounding effect of small comp deltas across decades, the Salary Negotiation Counter is where you act on the SLV-aware framing in the actual offer-negotiation moment.

Frequently Asked Questions

The most common questions we get about this calculator — each answer is kept under 60 words so you can scan.

What is statistical life value and how is it different from net worth?
Statistical life value (SLV) is the present value of your future earned income — what your career is worth today as a financial asset. Net worth is what you own today (assets minus debts). SLV is forward-looking; net worth is backward-looking. A 28-year-old MD-PhD with $300K of student debt has a negative net worth and a $7M+ statistical life value because the latter captures the 35 years of high earnings ahead. The SLV framing is what actuaries, life-insurance underwriters, wrongful-death attorneys, and economists use to value the asset that is your career — and it’s usually the largest asset on your honest balance sheet until you’re in your mid-50s.
Why does the calculator use a real (inflation-adjusted) discount rate?
Because the income growth input is also real — the math stays consistent. Mixing nominal growth with real discount (or vice versa) double-counts inflation and produces wrong PVs. The actuarial standard is to run the entire model in real terms: real growth (your career path beyond inflation) discounted at a real rate (T-bond yield minus inflation expectations, usually 1.5-2%, but conservatively 4-5% to account for income uncertainty). If you want nominal dollars, add expected inflation to both inputs (e.g. 3.5% real growth → 6% nominal at 2.5% inflation, 5% real discount → 7.5% nominal). The PV will be the same.
Why 60 % as the life-insurance floor?
Because life insurance replaces income, not net worth, and 60 % of statistical life value is the empirical floor that actuaries use as the ‘maximum reasonable insurable interest’ benchmark. Carriers will issue more — 100 % of SLV is achievable for high earners with clean health profiles — but they’ll push back on coverage above the SLV ceiling because there’s no underlying replacement value. The 60 % floor is the conservative number: enough coverage to replace the majority of your earnings stream for dependents, without the moral-hazard / cost-prohibitive issues at higher coverage tiers. A more rigorous answer pairs the SLV calculator with the dedicated Life Insurance Needs Calculator (DIME method).
What about the income I’ll earn but never see (taxes, retirement contributions)?
The SLV calculator uses gross income because that’s the canonical actuarial input. Tax-effected SLV (using net of taxes) is roughly 60-75 % of gross SLV depending on your bracket, and is the right number for some questions (replacement-income calculations) but not others (wrongful-death awards, which use gross because the family loses the gross stream, not the net). For most personal-finance uses, run the calc on gross income and mentally adjust by your effective tax rate when comparing the output to net-need numbers. The Tax Bracket Calculator handles the conversion if you need it precisely.
Why is the PV lower than the nominal sum of future earnings?
Because $100K received in year 30 isn’t worth $100K today — it’s worth $100K / (1.05)^30 = $23,138 at a 5 % discount. Time value of money compounds in reverse for future cash flows: each year further out gets discounted more heavily. At a 5 % discount over 30 years, PV is roughly 60-70 % of nominal lifetime earnings. The discount-drag row in the result surfaces this gap explicitly. If you set the discount rate to 0 %, PV equals nominal lifetime earnings — useful for ‘how much will I earn in total’ framing but not for ‘what is my career worth as an asset.’
Is this number the same as ‘value of a statistical life’ (VSL) used in regulation?
No — different concept, similar name. VSL is a public-policy number (~$10-13M in 2026 US regulatory analysis) representing what people collectively pay to avoid small risks of death, used by EPA / FDA / DOT to evaluate safety regulations. SLV (this calculator) is your individual human-capital asset value — what your specific earnings stream is worth at present. VSL applies population-wide; SLV is personal. The two numbers diverge by roughly 3-5× because VSL incorporates non-economic value (life enjoyment, etc.) that personal SLV ignores. Don’t conflate the two — wrongful-death lawyers use SLV; OSHA economists use VSL.
How sensitive is the output to the growth-rate assumption?
Very. At 35 years remaining, going from 2 % to 6 % real growth nearly triples the PV. Most people overestimate their career growth — the median worker’s real wage growth peaks around age 45 and declines slightly after. If you’re in a steep-trajectory field (engineering, medicine, finance, law early-career) 5-7 % real for 10-15 years is plausible, then taper to 1-3 %. For most workers, 2-3 % real is honest. Run two scenarios — your best-case 5 % and your conservative 2 % — and split the difference for a more honest planning number.
Why does the discount rate matter so much?
Because it’s a multiplicative compounding force — small changes propagate over decades. At 30 years remaining, going from 4 % to 6 % discount cuts PV by ~30 %. The actuarial standard is 4-5 % real (T-bond yield minus inflation expectations); using a higher rate (e.g. expected stock returns ~7 % real) is wrong because future earnings aren’t risk-free assets but are also not equity-correlated. The 5 % default is conservative and matches the IRS Section 7520 rate band most of the time. Use a lower rate (3 %) if you want the higher PV that life-insurance underwriters often quote; use a higher rate (6-7 %) if you’re in a volatile / cyclical field where future earnings carry meaningful uncertainty.
Should I use this number to negotiate salary?
Indirectly. The SLV doesn’t change how a hiring manager values you — they’re paying market for the role, not your statistical worth. But it changes how you should think about offers. A $5K cut in starting salary at age 30 isn’t a $5K problem — it’s a $5K × (PV multiplier of 30 yrs at your growth + discount) ≈ $80-120K problem in lifetime PV terms. Run the calc with $120K vs $115K starting income, same other inputs — the PV gap is shocking. Same logic in reverse: a 4 % raise that compounds is worth far more than its first-year nominal value suggests. Use SLV to make compounding-aware comp decisions, not to negotiate from.
Does my education / training count as part of statistical life value?
It’s already priced in via the income input. Higher education + specialized training raise your annual earnings above what an untrained worker earns; that earnings premium is the financial return on your education. If you want to isolate the ‘value of your degree’ specifically, run the SLV calc twice — once with your actual income, once with the median income for someone with only a high-school education ($45K). The PV difference is the financial return on every year and dollar you spent on education, capitalized. For most college-educated knowledge workers, that delta is $1.5-3M+.
What does AI replacement risk do to this number?
It depends entirely on which side of the productivity equation you’re on. Workers whose income comes from tasks AI can substitute (basic copywriting, simple legal review, routine analysis) face downward income growth or career truncation — set incomeGrowth to 0 % or negative, or shorten remainingWorkYears, to model that scenario. Workers whose income comes from AI-augmented productivity or AI-resistant skills (relationship-driven roles, physical trades, creative/strategic judgment, deep expert work) face higher income growth — bump incomeGrowth +1 to +2 %. The Statistical Life Value calculator is the right place to model this; the AI Job Replacement Risk Calculator handles the inverse question (how exposed is my specific role).
Can I run this for a stay-at-home parent or non-earning spouse?
Yes — input the imputed economic value of the unpaid work. Replacement childcare + household management + logistics in markets like SF / NY / DC costs $40-80K/yr; in lower-cost regions $25-45K/yr. Use that as the ‘annualIncome’ input. The output is the statistical economic worth of the unpaid contribution to the household — the right number for life-insurance sizing on a stay-at-home parent, who absolutely needs coverage even though they’re not formally employed. The SLV calc is one of the few places you can get that figure cleanly.