...people look at "reducing poverty" without looking at how many people die in the interim.    

This seems to me the worst flaw in simple economic analysis (Deininger, Dollar)   - if the poorest die, the income figures look better.  

So my question is this:  even if cost-benefit analysis often focuses on narrow policy options, is there any reason for the total mix of a government's policies not to be evaluated on the number of deaths among the most-vulnerable?      

Matt Berkley
Email to Jonathan Morduch, Princeton
3 August 2000