Critical Levels and the (Reverse) Repugnant Conclusion
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 pricipales either lead to the repugnant conclusion (which is the case for classical utilitarianism), or they violate the pareto plus principle and related properties (average utilitarianis 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 used population principles.Download Info
To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.
Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by UBC Department of Economics in its series UBC Departmental Archives with number 97-10.Length: 11 pages
Date of creation: 1997
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ubc:bricol:97-10
Contact details of provider:
Related research
Keywords: POPULATION ; ETHICS;Other versions of this item:
- Charles Blackorby & Walter Bossert & David Donaldson & Marc Fleurbaey, 1998. "Critical levels and the (reverse) repugnant conclusion," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 67(1), pages 1-15, February.
- Charles Blackorby & Walter Bossert, David Donaldson, & Marc Fleurbaey, 1997. "Critical Levels and the (Reverse) Repugnant Conclusion," Old UBC Departmental Papers 9710, UBC Department of Economics.
- D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
- D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- 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.
- Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 1997. "Birth-Date Dependent Population Ethics: Critical-Level Principles," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 260-284, December.
- 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.
- Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 1995. "Intertemporal Population Ethics: Critical-Level Utilitarian Principles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(6), pages 1303-20, November.
- Blackorby, Charles & Donaldson, David, 1984. "Social criteria for evaluating population change," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1-2), pages 13-33, November.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- 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.
- Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 2005. "Population Ethics and the Value of Life," Working Papers RP2005/03, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
- BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2003. "Population Ethics and the Value of Life," Cahiers de recherche 05-2003, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
- BOSSERT, Walter, 2006.
"Consistent Relations,"
Cahiers de recherche
2006-03, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
- BOSSERT, Walter, 2006. "Consistent Relations," Cahiers de recherche 03-2006, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
- Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 2000.
"Population Principles with Number-Dependent Critical Levels,"
Working Papers
2000-06, Rice University, Department of Economics.
- Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 2002. " Population Principles with Number-Dependent Critical Levels," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 4(3), pages 347-68.
- Claudio Zoli, 2009. "Variable population welfare and poverty orderings satisfying replication properties," Working Papers 69/2009, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
- 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.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ubc:bricol:97-10For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Maureen Chin).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

