Fixed-Point Utilitarianism

Maya Eden

No 21826, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: How should policymakers make decisions that affect the population trajectory? I study the implications of the person-affecting approach to population ethics, according to which we ought to be “in favor of making people happy but neutral about making happy people†(Narveson [1973]). I formalize this approach as a decision rule that is based on the premise that, whenever possible, we ought to select an option that is optimal for the people that it brings into existence. Under plausible conditions, this approach characterizes a solution to a fixed-point problem, in which the optimal policy maximizes a population-weighted sum of per-capita utilities.

Keywords: Population; ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 E61 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08
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