What’s a life worth? Apparently not as much as it used to be.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the value of a “statistical life” is $6.9 million. That sounds like a lot — even for something that is, in many ways, priceless — until you find out that the comparable figure five years ago was $7.8 million. That’s what the Associated Press discovered when it reviewed 12 years of cost-benefit analyses from the EPA, admittedly a less-than-flawless methodology.

Why is the EPA putting a dollar value on human life? When considering a proposed regulation, government agencies calculate how much it would cost if implemented and weigh that against the value of the lives that would be lost if the regulation isn’t imposed. If the cost is more than the benefit, then the proposed reg is deep-sixed.

Regulators are right to weigh cost versus benefit. They have to draw the line somewhere on how much money businesses or taxpayers should be made to pay in exchange for some marginal improvement in, say, air or water quality. Still, you have to wonder if the notoriously regulation-averse administration of President George W. Bush has stacked the deck in order to keep new regulations off the books.

The AP reported that, “according to the EPA, people shouldn’t think of the number as a price tag on a life.” But isn’t that just what it is?