Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/269274 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
FERDI Working Paper No. I13
Publisher: 
Fondation pour les études et recherches sur le développement international (FERDI), Clermont-Ferrand
Abstract: 
We assess whether the value of humanity (or global social welfare) has improved in the last decades despite (or because of ) the substantial increase in global population sizes. We use for this purpose a relatively unknown but simple and attractive social evaluation approach based on critical-level generalized utilitarianism (CLGU). CLGU posits that social welfare increases with population size if and only the new lives come with a utility level higher than that of a critical level. Despite its attractiveness, CLGU poses a number of practical difficulties that may explain why the literature has left it largely unexplored. The most important of these difficulties deal with the choice of an individual welfare aggregation function and with the value of the critical level.
JEL: 
D31
D63
I32
O15
Q56
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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