Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/327716 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 12106
Publisher: 
Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research - CESifo GmbH, Munich
Abstract: 
This paper characterizes a novel class of welfare criteria for settings with endogenous population. The core innovation is to treat parents' fertility preferences as ethically relevant, deferring to them on the quality--quantity trade-off under conditions of equality. The resulting family of criteria generalizes discounted utilitarianism by reconciling respect for parents' fertility preferences with equity across generations. These criteria resolve long-standing normative dilemmas that afflict existing approaches to population ethics, such as total and average utilitarianism. After formal characterization, I illustrate the criterion in stylized examples and a Barro–Becker environment.
Subjects: 
intergenerational justice
fertility preferences
exponentially-discounted utilitarianism
social welfare
JEL: 
D60
D70
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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