Survival, reproduction and congestion: The spaceship problem re-examined

Pierre-André Jouvet and Gregory Ponthiere

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: This paper re-examines the spaceship problem, i.e. the design of the optimal population under a fixed living space, by focusing on the dilemma between adding new beings and extending the life of existing beings. For that purpose, we characterize, under time-additive individual welfare depending negatively on population density, the preference ordering of a utilitarian social planner over lifetime-equal histories, i.e. histories with demographic conditions yielding an equal finite number of life-periods (imposed by resources constraints). The analysis of the spaceship problem contradicts widespread beliefs about the populationism of Classical Utilitarianism and the antipopulationism of Average Utilitarianism. We also study the invariance property exhibited by various utilitarian rankings to the total space available and to individual preferences. Finally, we compare histories for a spaceship with a stationary population, and try to accomodate intuitions about posterity and renewal of populations.

Keywords: population ethics; utilitarianism; renewal; longevity; fertility; environmental congestion; natalité; longévité; éthique de la population; congestion environnementale (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-04
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00564865v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00564865v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Survival, reproduction and congestion: the spaceship problem re-examined (2011)
Working Paper: Survival, reproduction and congestion: the spaceship problem re-examined (2011)
Working Paper: Survival, reproduction and congestion: the spaceship problem re-examined (2011)
Working Paper: Survival, reproduction and congestion: The spaceship problem re-examined (2010)
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:hal:wpaper:halshs-00564865

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().