“The economic losses suffered by children whose parents are wrongfully killed are generally in two categories: The cost of home, nurture, and support that the children could reasonably expect to have received from the parents’ income had they not been killed; & The cost of replacing the parents’ services in raising the children.
An approach available to the economist is to base the losses on maintaining the children in their family home in as nearly equivalent a manner as if their parents had not died. This would involve the projection of the parents’ income less the parents’ personal consumption expenses and plus the cost of replacing the parents’ services in rearing the children and maintaining the home. This approach is analagous to any death case. The major difference is that the losses are calculated only for the period of the children’s dependency.
The following facts and circumstances, among others, tend to prove the value of lost earning capacity and other elements of economic damages resulting from the wrong death of parents survived only by their children: Assumptions to be considered by witness, cost of raising one child, value of mother’s services, trends of costs to domestic service, summary, exclusions.”
[Stein on Personal Injury Damages [certain citations omitted]]
