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Critical Levels and the (Reverse) Repugnant Conclusion

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  • Charles Blackorby
  • Walter Bossert, David Donaldson,
  • Marc Fleurbaey

Abstract

It is well-known that there is a trade-off regarding the properties of population principles that are used to make social evaluations when the number of people in the society under consideration may vary. The commonly used principles either lead to the repugnant conclusion (which is the case for classical utilitarianism), or they violate the Pareto plus principle and related properties (average utilitarianism is an example of such a principle). This paper examines the nature of this trade-off and shows that the incompatibility between avoiding the repugnant conclusion and the Pareto plus principle is fundamental and not restricted to the commonly

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by UBC Department of Economics in its series Old UBC Departmental Papers with number 9710.

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Length: 14 pages
Date of creation: Feb 1997
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ubc:bcecwp:9710

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Keywords: population ethics; repugnant conclusion; critical levels;

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References

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  1. Blackorby, C. & Bossert, W. & Donalson, D., 1995. "Birth-Date Dependent Population Ethics: Critical-Level Principles," G.R.E.Q.A.M. 95a24, Universite Aix-Marseille III.
  2. Ng, Yew-Kwang, 1986. "Social criteria for evaluating population change: An alternative to the Blackorby-Donaldson criterion," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 375-381, April.
  3. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 1995. "Intertemporal Population Ethics: Critical-Level Utilitarian Principles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(6), pages 1303-20, November.
  4. Blackorby, Charles & Donaldson, David, 1984. "Social criteria for evaluating population change," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1-2), pages 13-33, November.
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Cited by:
  1. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 2001. "The Axiomatic Approach to Population Ethics," Discussion Paper 24, Center for Intergenerational Studies, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
  2. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2003. "Population Ethics and the Value of Life," Cahiers de recherche 2003-07, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
  3. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 14-2006, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
  4. BOSSERT, Walter, 2006. "Consistent Relations," Cahiers de recherche 2006-03, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
  5. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2002. "Critical-Level Population Principles and the Repugnant Conclusion," Cahiers de recherche 2002-15, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
  6. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 2000. "Population Principles with Number-Dependent Critical Levels," Working Papers 2000-06, Rice University, Department of Economics.
  7. Claudio Zoli, 2009. "Variable population welfare and poverty orderings satisfying replication properties," Working Papers 69/2009, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
  8. Ritxar Arlegi & Miguel Angel Ballester & María del Carmen Marco & Jorge Nieto, 2000. "Variable population egalitarian ethics and the critical-level: A note," Documentos de Trabajo - Lan Gaiak Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra 0013, Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra.
  9. Wagener, Andreas, 2000. "Variable population size issues in models of decentralized income redistribution," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 609-625, December.
  10. repec:mtl:montec:15-2002 is not listed on IDEAS

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