Intertemporally Consistent Population Ethics: Classical Utilitarian Principles

Charles Blackorby, Walter Bossert and David Donaldson
Additional contact information
Charles Blackorby: University of British Columbia
David Donaldson: University of British Columbia

Chapter 13 in Social Choice Re-Examined, 1996, pp 137-162 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Welfarist population ethics uses information about the well-being (utilities) of the individuals who are alive in alternative states of affairs to make social evaluations. Most principles that produce orderings of alternative states employ social value functions of those utilities to generate social preferences.2 The most commonly used principles are classical utilitarianism, whose value function is the simple sum of utilities, and average utilitarianism, whose value function is average utility. Other principles have been proposed as well — see, for example, Blackorby and Donaldson (1984), Hurka (1983), and Ng (1986). Generalized utilitarian rules employ transformed utilities (see Section 4 below).

Keywords: Social Choice; BRITISH COLUMBIA; Utility Level; Social Evaluation; Lifetime Utility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-349-25214-5_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349252145

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-25214-5_11

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Economic Association Series from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().