IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v196y2020ics016517652030330x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mere Addition is equivalent to avoiding the Sadistic Conclusion in all plausible variable-population social orderings

Author

Listed:
  • Franz, Nathan
  • Spears, Dean

Abstract

Economic policy evaluations require social welfare functions for variable-size populations. Two important axioms in the population ethics literature are Mere Addition and avoidance of the Sadistic Conclusion, both of which focus on the sign of lifetime utility. The population ethics literature treats these axioms as closely related but distinct: one influential review calls avoidance of the Sadistic Conclusion “less controversial.” Here, we provide weak, uncontroversial sufficient conditions for these two principles to be equivalent. Related results exist in prior literature, but these include only same-number utilitarian orderings and therefore exclude recent and theoretically important rank-dependent social evaluations that we include.

Suggested Citation

  • Franz, Nathan & Spears, Dean, 2020. "Mere Addition is equivalent to avoiding the Sadistic Conclusion in all plausible variable-population social orderings," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:196:y:2020:i:c:s016517652030330x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109547
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517652030330X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109547?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blackorby,Charles & Bossert,Walter & Donaldson,David J., 2005. "Population Issues in Social Choice Theory, Welfare Economics, and Ethics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521532587, November.
    2. Arrhenius, Gustaf, 2000. "An Impossibility Theorem for Welfarist Axiologies," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 247-266, October.
    3. repec:hal:pseose:hal-01048579 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. , B. & ,, 2014. "Escaping the repugnant conclusion: rank-discounted utilitarianism with variable population," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(3), September.
    5. 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.
    6. Blackorby, Charles & Donaldson, David, 1984. "Social criteria for evaluating population change," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1-2), pages 13-33, November.
    7. Ng, Yew-Kwang, 1989. "What Should We Do About Future Generations?," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(2), pages 235-253, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Walter Bossert & Susumu Cato & Kohei Kamaga, 2023. "Thresholds, critical levels, and generalized sufficientarian principles," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(4), pages 1099-1139, May.
    2. Cato, Susumu & Harada, Ko, 2023. "A new result on the impossibility of avoiding both the repugnant and sadistic conclusions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    3. Dean Spears & Mark Budolfson, 2021. "Repugnant conclusions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(3), pages 567-588, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dean Spears & Mark Budolfson, 2021. "Repugnant conclusions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(3), pages 567-588, October.
    2. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 2006-15, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
      • BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 14-2006, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    3. Claudio Zoli, 2009. "Variable population welfare and poverty orderings satisfying replication properties," Working Papers 69/2009, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    4. Kohei Kamaga, 2016. "Infinite-horizon social evaluation with variable population size," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(1), pages 207-232, June.
    5. Walter Bossert & Susumu Cato & Kohei Kamaga, 2023. "Thresholds, critical levels, and generalized sufficientarian principles," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(4), pages 1099-1139, May.
    6. Cato, Susumu & Harada, Ko, 2023. "A new result on the impossibility of avoiding both the repugnant and sadistic conclusions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    7. Dean Spears & Stéphane Zuber, 2023. "Foundations of utilitarianism under risk and variable population," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 61(1), pages 101-129, July.
    8. Spears, Dean & Budolfson, Mark, 2019. "Why Variable-Population Social Orderings Cannot Escape the Repugnant Conclusion: Proofs and Implications," IZA Discussion Papers 12668, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Christian Tarsney & Teruji Thomas, 2020. "Non-Additive Axiologies in Large Worlds," Papers 2010.06842, arXiv.org.
    10. 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.
    11. , B. & ,, 2014. "Escaping the repugnant conclusion: rank-discounted utilitarianism with variable population," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(3), September.
    12. Charles Blackorby & Walter Bossert & David Donaldson, 2003. "The Axiomatic Approach to Population Ethics," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 2(3), pages 342-381, October.
    13. Fleurbaey, Marc & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Discounting, risk and inequality: A general approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 34-49.
    14. Geir B. Asheim & Stéphane Zuber, 2017. "Rank-discounting as a resolution to a dilemma in population ethics," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 17041, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    15. Stéphane Zuber, 2018. "Population-adjusted egalitarianism," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01937766, HAL.
    16. Aurélie Méjean & Antonin Pottier & Marc Fleurbaey & Stéphane Zuber, 2020. "Catastrophic climate change, population ethics and intergenerational equity," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 873-890, November.
    17. Flores-Szwagrzak, Karol, 2022. "Learning by Convex Combination," Working Papers 16-2022, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics.
    18. BOSSERT, Walter, 2006. "Consistent Relations," Cahiers de recherche 2006-03, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    19. Charles Blackorby & Walter Bossert & David Donaldson, 2002. "Population Principles with Number‐Dependent Critical Levels," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 4(3), pages 347-368, July.
    20. Yves Arrighi & Mohammad Abu‐Zaineh & Bruno Ventelou, 2015. "To Count or Not to Count Deaths: Reranking Effects in Health Distribution Evaluation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(2), pages 193-205, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:196:y:2020:i:c:s016517652030330x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.