IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pophec/v19y2020i3p229-247.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The value of longevity

Author

Listed:
  • Greg Bognar

    (Stockholm University, Sweden and La Trobe University, Australia)

Abstract

Longevity is valuable. Most of us would agree that it’s bad to die when you could go on living, and death’s badness has to do with the value your life would have if it continued. Most of us would also agree that it’s bad if life expectancy in a country is low, it’s bad if there is high infant mortality and it’s bad if there is a wide mortality gap between different groups in a population. But how can we make such judgments more precise? How should we evaluate the harm of mortality in a population? Although philosophers have written a lot about the harm of death for individuals, very little work has been done on the harm of mortality for populations. In this article, I take the first steps towards developing a theory of the harm of population mortality. Even these first steps, I argue, lead to surprising results.

Suggested Citation

  • Greg Bognar, 2020. "The value of longevity," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 19(3), pages 229-247, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:19:y:2020:i:3:p:229-247
    DOI: 10.1177/1470594X19880279
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470594X19880279
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1470594X19880279?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
    ---><---

    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, September.
    2. Millum, Joseph, 2015. "Age and Death: A Defence of Gradualism," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(3), pages 279-297, September.
    3. Broome,John, 1999. "Ethics out of Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521642750, September.
    4. Christopher J L Murray & Sandeep C Kulkarni & Catherine Michaud & Niels Tomijima & Maria T Bulzacchelli & Terrell J Iandiorio & Majid Ezzati, 2006. "Eight Americas: Investigating Mortality Disparities across Races, Counties, and Race-Counties in the United States," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 3(9), pages 1-12, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Marc Fleurbaey, 2010. "Assessing Risky Social Situations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(4), pages 649-680, August.
    2. McCarthy, David & Mikkola, Kalle & Thomas, Teruji, 2016. "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility," MPRA Paper 72578, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Marc Fleurbaey & Grégory Ponthière, 2019. "The Value of a Life-Year and the Intuition of Universality," PSE Working Papers halshs-02393392, HAL.
    4. Aronsson, Thomas & Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2011. "Animal Welfare and Social Decisions," Working Papers in Economics 485, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    5. Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2006. "Should Animal Welfare Count?," Working Papers in Economics 197, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, revised 09 May 2006.
    6. McCarthy, David & Mikkola, Kalle & Thomas, Teruji, 2020. "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 77-113.
    7. Pierre Pestieau & Gregory Ponthiere, 2017. "Optimal fertility under age-dependent labour productivity," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(2), pages 621-646, April.
    8. Antoinette Baujard, 2016. "Utilitarianism and anti-utilitarianism," Chapters, in: Gilbert Faccarello & Heinz D. Kurz (ed.), Handbook on the History of Economic Analysis Volume III, chapter 40, pages 576-588, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Thomas Aronsson & Sugata Ghosh & Ronald Wendner, 2023. "Positional preferences and efficiency in a dynamic economy," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 61(2), pages 311-337, August.
    10. Adler, Matthew D. & Ferranna, Maddalena & Hammitt, James K. & Treich, Nicolas, 2021. "Fair innings? The utilitarian and prioritarian value of risk reduction over a whole lifetime," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    11. Ole Røgeberg & Morten Nordberg, 2005. "A defence of absurd theories in economics," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(4), pages 543-562.
    12. Stelter, Robert, 2014. "Over-aging: Are present human populations too old?," Thuenen-Series of Applied Economic Theory 137, University of Rostock, Institute of Economics.
    13. , B. & ,, 2014. "Escaping the repugnant conclusion: rank-discounted utilitarianism with variable population," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(3), September.
    14. Melissa P L Chan & Robert S Weinhold & Reuben Thomas & Julia M Gohlke & Christopher J Portier, 2015. "Environmental Predictors of US County Mortality Patterns on a National Basis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(12), pages 1-25, December.
    15. Thomas Baudin, 2011. "Family Policies: What Does the Standard Endogenous Fertility Model Tell Us?," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 13(4), pages 555-593, August.
    16. Hammitt, James K., 2022. "Prevention, Treatment, and Palliative Care: The Relative Value of Health Improvements under Alternative Evaluation Frameworks," TSE Working Papers 22-1339, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    17. 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.
    18. Miller, Charlotte E. & Vasan, Ramachandran S., 2021. "The southern rural health and mortality penalty: A review of regional health inequities in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    19. Fleurbaey, Marc & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Discounting, risk and inequality: A general approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 34-49.
    20. Asheim, Geir B. & Zuber, Stéphane, 2016. "Evaluating intergenerational risks," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 104-117.

    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:sae:pophec:v:19:y:2020:i:3:p:229-247. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.