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The value of life and the value of population

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Abstract

This paper first distinguishes structured and unstructured approaches to valuing life. The unstructured approach bases its valuations on people’s raw preferences, whereas the structured approach imposes a theoretical framework about the structure of value. The paper recommends the structured approach. This opens the way to considering the value of adding people to the population. The paper examines a common intuition that adding people is not in itself valuable, and explains the difficulties this intuition encounters.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Road, BS8 1TB, Bristol, UK

    John Broome

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  1. John Broome
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Correspondence to John Broome.

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Broome, J. The value of life and the value of population. J Popul Econ 9, 3–18 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00003826

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00003826

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