Invisible Hemorrhage: 400 to 900 Million in Human Capital Destroyed by Gangs in 2024

An Application of Human Capital Valuation Methods to the Haitian Context. The exercise of translating human tragedy into economic terms sometimes reveals truths that emotion alone could never convey with the same force. This attempt to apply human capital valuation methods to the 5,600 deaths recorded in Haiti in 2024 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights suggests a range of $400 to $900 million in lost productive wealth—the equivalent of 20 to 45% of the national budget. The breadth of this range reflects the considerable uncertainties that surround such an exercise.

Methodological Foundations: Between Conceptual Heritage and Admitted Limits

The exercise of assessing destroyed human capital—and it would be dishonest to deny that it raises genuine ethical as well as methodological questions—fits within an intellectual tradition whose genealogy must briefly be traced. Thomas C. Schelling, in his article The Life You Save May Be Your Own (The Public Interest, No. 15, Spring 1968, pp. 127–136), laid the theoretical groundwork for what would becom

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