EQUAL VALUE OF LIFE AND THE PARETO PRINCIPLE

Andreas Hasman and Lars Peter Østerdal

Economics and Philosophy, 2004, vol. 20, issue 1, 19-33

Abstract: A principle claiming equal entitlement to continued life has been strongly defended in the literature as a fundamental social value. We refer to this principle as ‘equal value of life'. In this paper we argue that there is a general incompatibility between the equal value of life principle and the weak Pareto principle and provide proof of this under mild structural assumptions. Moreover we demonstrate that a weaker, age-dependent version of the equal value of life principle is also incompatible with the weak Pareto principle. However, both principles can be satisfied if transitivity of social preference is relaxed to quasi-transitivity.

Date: 2004
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