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The welfare economics of population

Abstract:
Intuition suggests there is no value in adding people to the population if it brings no benefits to people already living: creating people is morally neutral in itself. This paper examines the difficulties of incorporating this intuition into a coherent theory of the value of population. It takes three existing theories within welfare economics - average utilitarianism, relativist utilitarianism, and critical-level utilitarianism - and considers whether they can satisfactorily accommodate the intuition that creating people is neutral.
Publication status:
Published
Peer review status:
Peer reviewed

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Institution:
University of St Andrews
Department:
Department of Moral Philosophy
Role:
Author


Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Journal:
Oxford Economic Papers More from this journal
Volume:
48
Issue:
2
Pages:
177-193
Publication date:
1996-01-01
EISSN:
1464-3812
ISSN:
0030-7653


Language:
English
Subjects:
UUID:
uuid:bcdfb095-135b-4c80-abf4-04195dc4ad7b
Local pid:
ora:4302
Deposit date:
2010-10-21
ARK identifier:

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