Utilitarianism and unequal longevities: A remedy?

Pre-print, Working paper: Classical utilitarianism, if coupled with standard assumptions such as the expected utility hypothesis and additive lifetime welfare, has the undesirable corollary to recommend a redistribution of resources from short-lived to long-lived agents, against any intuition of compensation. This paper proposes a remedy to that undesirable property of utilitarianism. This remedy consists in imputing, when solving the social planner's problem, the consumption equivalent of a long life to the consumption of long-lived agents. Provided the consumption equivalent is positive, the modified first-best problem exhibits a compensation of short-lived agents, under the form of a higher consumption. Then, in a general framework where agents differ in survival prospects, we compare the ex ante remedy (compensating agents with a lower life expectancy) and the ex post remedy (compensating short-lived agents), and show their incompatibility.

Author(s)

Grégory Ponthière, Marie-Louise Leroux

Date of publication
  • 2009
Keywords JEL
D63 I12 I18 J18
Keywords
  • Utilitarisme
  • Longévité différentielle
  • Équivalent consommation
Internal reference
  • PSE Working Papers n°2009-19
Version
  • 1