Intergenerational Population Ethics

Paolo Giovanni Piacquadio

No 12106, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper characterizes a novel class of welfare criteria for settings with endogenous population. The core innovation is to treat parents’ fertility preferences as ethically relevant, deferring to them on the quality--quantity trade-off under conditions of equality. The resulting family of criteria generalizes discounted utilitarianism by reconciling respect for parents' fertility preferences with equity across generations. These criteria resolve long-standing normative dilemmas that afflict existing approaches to population ethics, such as total and average utilitarianism. After formal characterization, I illustrate the criterion in stylized examples and a Barro–Becker environment.

Keywords: intergenerational justice; fertility preferences; exponentially-discounted utilitarianism; social welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D60 D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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