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Splitting The Bill: Estimating Personal Consumption In Case Of Wrongful Death, Kathleen Ellis, David I. Rosenbaum

UCARE Research Products

In cases of wrongful death, the decedent’s survivors may sue alleged responsible parties for lost financial support. Forensic experts estimate a deceased individual’s personal consumption rate in order to separate the portion of the decedent’s income spent on him- or herself from the amount available as financial support for dependents. This paper enhances the prevailing estimation process by regressing consumption rates over individual households surveyed by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics in its annual Consumer Expenditure Survey. We contend that this method improves the precision of estimates by accounting for the inherent heterogeneity in consumption among households with …