Rank-additive population ethics

Pivato, Marcus

doi:10.1007/s00199-019-01194-8

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Population ethics studies the axiomatic properties of social welfare relations for differentsized populations. In one of the most important recent advances of this literature, Asheim and Zuber (2014) (hereafter AZ) have proposed and axiomatized rank-discounted generalized utilitarianism (RDGU), which has been further investigated by Pivato (2020). AZ show that RDGU escapes the "Repugnant Conclusion" (Parfit, 1984), a well-studied property of some approaches to population ethics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Additively-separable and rank-discounted variable-population social welfare functions: A characterization

Spears

Stefánsson

2021

Economics Letters

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Economic policy evaluations require social welfare functions for variable-size populations. Two important candidates are critical-level generalized utilitarianism (CLGU) and rank-discounted critical-level generalized utilitarianism, which was recently characterized by Asheim and Zuber (2014) (AZ). AZ introduce a novel axiom, existence of egalitarian equivalence (EEE). First, we show that, under some uncontroversial criteria for a plausible social welfare relation, EEE suffices to rule out the Repugnant Conclusion of population ethics (without AZ's other novel axioms). Second, we provide a new characterization of CLGU: AZ's set of axioms is equivalent to CLGU when EEE is replaced by the axiom same-number independence.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Additively-separable and rank-discounted variable-population social welfare functions: A characterization

Spears

Stefánsson

2021

Economics Letters

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“…Ng's (1986) number-dampened utilitarianism and its generalizations presented by Blackorby et al (2005) and Asheim and Zuber (2014) cannot avoid both the repugnant and sadistic conclusions. Its most general form examined in Asheim and Zuber (2014) )−g(α)], where β ∈ (0, 1) and u [ ] is a non-decreasing rearrangement of u; see also Pivato (2020) and Asheim and Zuber (2022) for further generalized forms of rank-dependent utilitarianism. That these two classes of principles are subject to the dilemma is a consequence of an impossibility result established by Bossert et al (2021b).…”

Section: Avoidance Of the Repugnant Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Note that the framework we and most of the existing literature on population ethics employ is actualist. Pivato (2020) shows that in the possibilist framework, the class of rank-additive orderings contains those orderings that avoid both the repugnant and sadistic conclusions. Unlike his reconciliation, our observation that both the repugnant and the sadistic conclusion can be avoided by generalized critical-level sufficientarian orderings illustrates that this reconciliation can be achieved without having to give priority to the worst-off and even within the actualist framework.…”

Section: Avoidance Of the Repugnant Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A notable feature of our orderings is that some of them can avoid two well-known undesirable attributes that have been studied in population ethics by authors such as Parfit (1976Parfit ( , 1982Parfit ( , 1984, Blackorby and Donaldson (1984), Arrhenius (2000), Blackorby et al (2004Blackorby et al ( , 2005, and Spears and Budolfson (2021). If the critical level is higher than the utility level that represents a neutral life, Parfit's repugnant conclusion can be avoided.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Thresholds, critical levels, and generalized sufficientarian principles

2022

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This paper provides an axiomatic analysis of sufficientarian social evaluation. Sufficientarianism has emerged as an increasingly important notion of distributive justice. We propose a class of principles that we label generalized critical-level sufficientarian orderings. The distinguishing feature of our new class is that its members exhibit constant critical levels of well-being that are allowed to differ from the threshold of sufficiency. Our basic axiom assigns priority to those below the threshold, a property that is shared by numerous other sufficientarian approaches. When combined with the well-known strong Pareto principle and the assumption that there be a constant critical level, the axiom implies that the critical level cannot be below the threshold. The main results of the paper are characterizations of our new class and an important subclass. As a final observation, we identify the generalized critical-level sufficientarian orderings that permit us to avoid the repugnant conclusion and the sadistic conclusion, which are known as two fundamental challenges in population ethics.

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“…This is the case because adding a person at the utility level to a utility-unaffected population does not necessarily lead to a distribution that is as good as the original. See also Pivato (2020) and Asheim and Zuber (2022) for alternative generalized classes.…”

Section: Generalized Variable-value Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting variable-value population principles

Bossert

Cato²,

Kamaga³

2022

Economics and Philosophy

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We examine a general class of variable-value population principles. Our particular focus is on the extent to which such principles can avoid the repugnant and sadistic conclusions. We show that if a mild limit property is imposed, avoidance of the repugnant conclusion implies the sadistic conclusion. This result generalizes earlier observations by showing that they apply to a substantially larger class of principles. Our second theorem states that, under the limit property, the axiom of mere addition also conflicts with avoidance of the repugnant conclusion. This result is a consequence of a similar observation that appears in the earlier literature.

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Rank-additive population ethics

Cited by 12 publications

References 33 publications

Additively-separable and rank-discounted variable-population social welfare functions: A characterization

Additively-separable and rank-discounted variable-population social welfare functions: A characterization

Thresholds, critical levels, and generalized sufficientarian principles

Revisiting variable-value population principles

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