Is the value of humanity increasing? A critical-level enquiry

John Cockburn, Jean-Yves Duclos and Agnes Zabsonre

No I13, Working Papers from FERDI

Abstract: We assess whether the value of humanity (or global social welfare) has improved in the last decades despite (or because of ) the substantial increase in global population sizes. We use for this purpose a relatively unknown but simple and attractive social evaluation approach based on critical-level generalized utilitarianism (CLGU). CLGU posits that social welfare increases with population size if and only the new lives come with a utility level higher than that of a critical level. Despite its attractiveness, CLGU poses a number of practical difficulties that may explain why the literature has left it largely unexplored. The most important of these difficulties deal with the choice of an individual welfare aggregation function and with the value of the critical level.

JEL-codes: D31 D63 I32 O15 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-10
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Is the value of humanity increasing? A critical-level enquiry (2012)
Working Paper: Is the value of humanity increasing? A critical-level enquiry (2012)
Working Paper: Is the value of humanity increasing? A critical-level enquiry (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fdi:wpaper:649

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