Discounting the utilities of future people or giving smaller weights to groups other thanone's own is often criticized on the grounds that the resulting objective function diers fromthe ethically appropriate one...

This note investigates the extension of Roberts' price-independent welfare prescriptions toalternatives in which population size and composition can vary. We show that ethicallyunsatisfactory orderings result. Suppose that a single person is to be added to a populationthat is unaected in utility...

This paper illustrates the application of functional-equations results in population ethics.In an intertemporal framework, we provide characterizations of several classes of variablepopulationsocial orderings that may depend on individual lengths of life in addition tolifetime utilities...

We analyze the rationalizability of variable-population social-choice functions in a welfaristframework. It is shown that xed-population rationalizability and a weakening ofcongruence together are necessary and suffcient for rational choice, given a plausible dominanceproperty that prevents the...

Public policies often involve choices of alternatives in which the size and the composition of the population may vary. Examples are the allocation of resources to prenatal care and the design of aid packages to developing countries. In order to assess the corresponding feasible choices on...