Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctl/louvre/1992022.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

From the “Value of Life” to the Economics and Ethics of Population : the Path is Purely Methodological

Author

Listed:
  • Jacques H. DRÈZE

    (Université Catholique de Louvain)

Abstract
The paper discusses the relationship between two problems, namely: (i) assigning a value to reduction in death probabilities, i.e. defining a «value of life», and (ii) assigning a value to changes in pop- ulation, i.e. defining guidelines for the ethics and economics of pop- ulation. While, for Broome, "in one sense, prolonging a person's life and adding a new person to the world are alternative ways of doing the same things", this paper argues that the two problems are quite distinct, in the sense that a precise answer to the first provides no guide live at all for second, and conversely. There is no inconsinstency in providing safety according to a high "value of life" while giving pop- ulation growth a negative value. But there is a methodological link: both problèmes have a public choice dimension, and can therefore be approached along parallel methodological lines. With respect to the economics and ethics of population, the paper oners some defense of the Pareto criterion among the living, and comments on the practice and theory of social choise.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacques H. DRÈZE, 1992. "From the “Value of Life” to the Economics and Ethics of Population : the Path is Purely Methodological," Discussion Papers (REL - Recherches Economiques de Louvain) 1992022, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    • Handle: RePEc:ctl:louvre:1992022
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40723985
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ctl:louvre:1992022. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Sebastien SCHILLINGS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iruclbe.html .

    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.