Making people happy or making happy people? Questionnaire-experimental studies of population ethics and policy.

ABSTRACT: Is a larger population of people living good lives a better population, all else equal? This question is central to population issues in social welfare, ethics, and policy. Many answers in the philosophical literature argue that if a policy choice results in the birth of additional people living good lives, these extra lives are irrelevant to any evaluation of the policy. This paper applies the questionnaire-experimental method of empirical studies of social choice to investigate participants' policy choices and social orderings with respect to population size and average well-being. In general, heterogeneous responses depended on the quantitative and qualitative properties of the question. In particular, an experimentally manipulated increase in population size caused an option to be more

SUBMITTER: Spears D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11245279 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature