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Disagree "Policy makers who care about well-being need a recursive model of how adult life-satisfaction is predicted by childhood influences, acting both directly and (indirectly) through adult circumstances. Layard et al. (2014) estimated such a model using the British Cohort Study (1970) and showed that the most powerful childhood predictor of adult life-satisfaction is the child's emotional health, followed by the child's conduct. Among adult circumstances, mental and physical health are much more important that family income accounts that for only 0.5% of the variance of life-satisfaction. Initial conditions and the early investments in children are important for the individual, the society, and the national and the *global* economy! Over time, parents and countries were investing differently in children, which seems to explain part of the well-being differences within and between groups of children and adults. Academics, policy makers and decision takers are daily talking and writing about sustainable development with more and more focus the well-being of the individuals. These discussions are increasingly supported by robust strong empirical evidence about the factors and the early investments that increase the individuals' well-being. Part of this development is explained by the increasing use of the WELLBYs (life satisfaction-adjusted years of life) of the population and the ability of the WELLBY methodology to address complex externalities. Layard, R., A. E. Clark, F. Cornaglia, N. Powdthavee, and J. Vernoit. What Predicts a Successful Life? A Life-Course Model of Wellbeing, Economic Journal, 124, F720 F738, 2014. "
Professor Daniela Andrén
Senior Lecturer, Örebro University School of Business -
Agree "Forget ethics and philosophy for a moment; forget a utopian/mechanistic view to policy making. When values inform decisions, it requires a predictive model of the future. Uncertainty about the near-future consequences of a decision will always be tighter (smaller) than the uncertainty about far-future outcomes. Therefore, it is never possible to treat future generations ""identically"" as those today. More specifically, on such long time frames, or whenever there is high complexity, uncertainty, or novel dynamics, the kind of benefit/cost thinking which may work for shorter-run outcomes will become inappropriate. Mixing long with short would overwhelm every single short-run decision with enormous uncertainty that comes from the long-run predictions. Thus, even if we agree to prioritize wellbeing in some way, the same approach cannot be used. For this reason, societies develop other heuristics or general conservationist policies to look after those in the far future."
Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Associate Professor, McGill University -
Neither agree nor disagree We need to consider policy alternatives in term on all known benefits and costs, independent of whether they occur now or in the future. We need systems thinking over time. An obvious example is an investment in energy production alternatives: solar has minimal negative externalities on the environment compared to coal. Polution from coal could affect future weather patterns which could negatively impact food production, among other things.
Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) -
Disagree There should be an equal treatment of human being across generation but what has to be considered is that a change affecting permanently the future is affecting more individuals than just the current generation...in this sense future generations should weight more
Professor Leonardo Bechetti
Professor of Economics, University of Rome Tor Vergata -
Agree I agree for the most part, except that there are some known cases where treating future generations equally leads to absurd implications. In those cases, we may need to discount future generations relative to the current generation.
Professor Daniel Benjamin
Associate Professor of Economics, University of Southern California -
Neither agree nor disagree I wonder to what extent intergenerational discounting arguments would apply here, if a happy society today does have positive effects on future outcomes (including wellbeing itself).
Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich -
Disagree "I do not necessarily disagree on weighting each future generation as much as the current generation, but the question is whether (i) we can predict their preferences or (ii) how many individuals will they be in the future or how long will we exist. In fact, we could also take into account the wellbeing of other beings, and not only of human beings. Again, if we know what are the determinants of their wellbeing. We could however take a human rights approach. This is, we might want to grantee that decisions taken today do not jeopardize the existence of future generations and their right to a dignified life. This is, taking decisions today that do not compromise the possibility of future generations to meet their needs."
Professor Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell
Professor of Economics, IAE-CSIC -
Neither agree nor disagree When making any decision, we weight more heavily information that is more certain. For a similar reason does it make sense to weight more heavily the relatively more certain quantity of the wellbeing of today's alive humans (and our potential to alter said wellbeing based on known current technology) relative to the well-being of future humans at whose existence and happiness we can only guess. Additionally, when setting policy to promote the wellbeing of present humans we are also directly impacting the welfare of future generations, through such mechanisms as the intergenerational propagation of wellbeing and the decreased tolerance for dirty and dangerous environments that is created when incomes rise. The tradeoff between the wellbeing of present generations and that of future generations is therefore not as stark as is often portrayed.
Professor Gigi Foster
Associate Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator, School of Economics, UNSW Business School -
Completely agree Equal treatment of generations corresponds to what has always been argued in political economy.
Professor Bruno Frey
Visiting Professor of Economics and Wellbeing, University of Basel -
Completely disagree This is not a workable suggestion. No current generation is totally selfless towards all future generations, nor is anyone prepared for the possible consequences of that stance, such as that current generations should be willing to forego all pleasures in the case that allocating all surplus to future generations benefits those future generations more than it costs us now. It is also presuming that there will always be future generations and that humanity in the far future will be in some essential way the same as it is now. That is an untrue depiction.
Professor Paul Frijters
Professorial Research Fellow, CEP Wellbeing Programme, London School of Economics -
Neither agree nor disagree I think we should prioritize the wellbeing of the next generations while we can. We have already lived much of our lives.
Professor Carol Graham
Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution -
Completely agree If we accept that a government should treat 2 unidentifiable current people the same, then there can be no ethical reason to change that practice just because the unidentifiable people are of different generations.
Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington -
Agree "One of the main problems of policymaking in democracies is to give policymakers an incentive to take the wellbeing of future generations into account at all - since most of them won't yet be voters at the next election. In principle, though, the wellbeing of future generations should matter as much as that of current ones. There are, however, some technical difficulties in this kind of intergenerational wellbeing accounting. I want to mention only two. First, it is not clear whether and how the future should be discounted. When measuring wellbeing in monetary equivalents, one has to take into account that future generations will probably be richer and thus a future dollar will generate less additional wellbeing than a dollar today. Of course, there is uncertainty about how much richer future generations will be. Recent research proposes to use discount rates that decline over time to adjust for this uncertainty. Another problem concerns the intertemporal comparability of standard wellbeing measures. For example, when life satisfaction is measured on a scale with fixed end-points (e.g. 0 to 10), the meaning of these endpoints can change over time. When objective circumstances change, e.g. when societies become richer, the same response on the 0-10-scale might be an indicator of objectively better (and subjectively preferred) life circumstances for future than for current generations. This has to be taken into account when comparing the wellbeing of different generations."
Professor Andreas Knabe
Professor (Chair in Public Economics), Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg -
Completely agree I do not believe that there is a moral rationale for discounting the wellbeing of future generations relative to the current one. Nevertheless, the public does not see things this way, and policy makers cannot and ought not ignore the preferences of the public that they represent. This is not unlike the question of whether policy makers should preference the welfare of their own citizens over that of people living in other countries.
Professor Guy Mayraz
Lecturer, University of Sydney -
Agree Since we have appreciated the investment outcomes of past generations, we should learn to ensure wellbeing outcomes for future generations with current investments. This principle should inform policies.
Professor Maurizio Pugno
Full Professor of Economics, University of Cassino -
Disagree In economics we are so used to intertemporal consumption analyses and time discounts that we may be inclined to apply some discount to future well-being. However, there is no reason at all to introduce any difference between the well-being of present and future generations. Differentiating between the present and the future is just a matter of perspective; this is: of which generation you belong to.
Professor Mariano Rojas
Professor of Economics, Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla -
Neither agree nor disagree In principle it seems obvious that present and future generations should be treated as of equal moral worth. However, this is an ethical position that is not subject to empirical analysis. On a more practical level present and future generations need to be treated differently. We can observe the outcomes experienced by the current generation and how these are distributed across the population. It is therefore possible to target policies on the basis of their impact on wellbeing. However, for future generations we do no know their preferences, capabilities, constraints, or the technology with which they will be working. It is therefore challenging to directly evaluate the impact of policies on the wellbeing of future generations. We can, however, consider whether the aggregate stocks of productive resources that we pass on to future generations are larger or smaller than those available to the current generation. This is at the heart of the OECD's capital stocks model of intergenerational wellbeing (OECD, 2013, 2015) and the measurement of intergenerational wealth (Arrow, Dasgupta et al, 2012).
Professor Conal Smith
Senior Associate at Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington -
Completely agree Principally yes, if one adheres to the moral 'Greatest happiness principle'. Practically, there is the problem that prediction of effects on future generations will typically be less certain. So policy makers will often have to balance certain effect on the present generation agains uncertain effects of future generations.
Professor Ruut Veenhoven
Professor of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam -
Completely agree "The question of intergenerational utility discounting is one of the most controversial isues in welfare economics, and one of the most consequential ones. For instance, depending on the pure rate of time preference, economists' assessments of climate change policies vastly differ (e.g., Stern 2007, Nordhaus 2019). Thinkers like Pigou rejected pure time preference in public decision making -- provided there is no uncertainty as to the very existence of future generations. Disregarding this latter aspect, the issue of time discounting is not much different from spatial discounting: should policymakers take account of the wellbeing consequences of their choices in distant places outside their nations? An important consideration with respect to both temporal and spatial discounting is whether taking account by a national decision maker of 'too many' people affected (in time and space) will overuse the respective countries' resources. For instance, is it advisable to spread a finite amount of some natural resource evenly over infinitely many generations? Or: how many refugees should be allowed to come to a country? Adam Smith (1759), in his ""'Theory of Moral Sentiments"" , may have been right in positing that moral duties come in different intensities depending on mental, spatial and temporal proximity, if only for pragmatic reasons.The limits to discounting appear to be the basic needs of both the present and future generations. Nordhaus, W.D. (2019), Climate Change: The Ultimate Challenge for Economics, American Economic Review 109, 1991-2014. Smith A. (1759). The Theory of Moral Sentiments, London: Andrew Millar (1967).. Stern, N. (2007), The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, Cambridge University Press "
Professor Heinz Welsch
Professor of Economics, University of Oldenburg
World Wellbeing Panel
When policymakers compare current and future wellbeing outcomes, they should treat future generations identically with the current generation (as if behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance).
If government were considering the closure of an IVF clinic they need not count the foregone wellbeing of unborn IVF children because those children are never born.
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Disagree Procreation has impact on both the individual, the society, and the economy. Having happy healthy children increases the individual’s well-being. Individuals who want but cannot have their own children suffer emotionally, which can imply large individual and societal costs when they are losing partially or totally their work capacity. This happens even when parents have children who suffer; there are both individual and societal costs. From this perspective and considering the advances in our understanding of congenital malformations, mental retardation, and genetic disease, combined with the existent knowledge of predicting many of these adverse conditions, it is not straightforward, but it is possible to take in account the foregone well-being of unborn when evaluating the cost of the closure of an IVF clinic. Therefore, government should consider the foregone well-being of unborn IVF children when considering the closure of an IVF clinic.
Professor Daniela Andrén
Senior Lecturer, Örebro University School of Business -
Agree "Let's avoid trolleology. I find this absurd because we don't have societies in which there are not extant people suffering more than what we might hope for a future generation, so no policy maker would openly consider this question and get away with it. In any case, the relevant question here is about whether we care about average wellbeing rather than summed wellbeing; it is not to do with time horizons. I believe aggregation questions lie beyond what the science of wellbeing can offer, anyway. The endpoint of the predictive application of our field of study should be the prediction of distributions, nothing more."
Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Associate Professor, McGill University -
Neither agree nor disagree This is a completely different scenario to the first WWP question. First one needs to consider whether IVF is a public health provision or a commercially available health procedure. If a commercial procedure then let the market prevail. If a public health provision then we need to again engage in system thinking. What are the social benefits over time of providing a publicly-funded IVF program, or, the next best alternative(s)?
Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) -
Disagree If a decision affects the likelihood that an individual is born or not it matters a lot
Professor Leonardo Bechetti
Professor of Economics, University of Rome Tor Vergata -
Agree I agree, but of course the wellbeing of would-be parents should be considered.
Professor Daniel Benjamin
Associate Professor of Economics, University of Southern California -
Neither agree nor disagree Cost-benefit-analysis includes opportunity costs such as foregone earnings. I don't see why this would not have to apply to a well-being approach to cost-benefit analysis. That such estimates will be hugely imprecise in decisions that have long inter-temporal consequences with uncertain outcomes just highlights that cost-benefit analysis should be seen as "social practice" not a precise technical algorithm (an argument I owe to Dan Hausman). But in principle, government decisions should try and take into account such implicit costs.
Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich -
Disagree Although again it is hard to measure and thus take into account the wellbeing of the unborn (or born in the future) children, I would argue that the closure of an IVF needs to take into account not only the potential impact on parent’s wellbeing, but also the children's wellbeing difference between being born from IVF and not being born; as well as the wellbeing of children who would be born anyway.
Professor Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell
Professor of Economics, IAE-CSIC -
Neither agree nor disagree When a policy that is likely to affect fertility is considered - like, for example, policies to provide better-quality health care, or policies to reduce pollution - do we directly consider the estimated effect on fertility in our analysis through "counting" the welfare of the additional unborn humans that we estimate will be born in future because of the policy? Similarly, do we count (as a negative) the reduced total human wellbeing that comes with economic development in general, and investments in education for girls in particular, through those girls having fewer babies in future to "produce" human wellbeing just by existing? Not usually. We usually consider simply the effect of a policy on the presently alive humans it services. On such a basis one could argue that the relevant wellbeing effects of closing an IVF clinic are limited to those that impact the would-be parents directly (e.g., through their suffering at not having a wanted child). However, IVF technology is much more clearly and directly linked to fertility than many other policies, and in other situations where there is a clear and direct link between a policy and the welfare of an unborn human, we do sometimes consider the welfare of that unborn human - such as for example when setting vehicle safety belt requirements or alcohol-use guidance for pregnant mothers. Notably, the unborn humans whose welfare is counted in such policy-making have usually been conceived already. Hence, in deciding whether to close an IVF clinic, one could argue on the basis of precedent for counting the welfare of any unborn humans who have been conceived already via the IVF clinic's operations and who may be negatively impacted by a withdrawal of post-conception services, but not (or at least only with a heavy discount) those humans yet to be conceived and who will not be conceived if the clinic is closed.
Professor Gigi Foster
Associate Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator, School of Economics, UNSW Business School -
Completely agree Is this not simply common sense? I thin so!
Professor Bruno Frey
Visiting Professor of Economics and Wellbeing, University of Basel -
Completely disagree "The logical consequence of agreeing with this question is that future generations do not matter in themselves at all and that there is no negative to preventing future generations from being born. That is unworkable and not very human. Our children do matter even before they are born. Yet, the degree to which they matter is hard to agree on. Indeed, the question to which the unborn matter is perhaps the most difficult question in utilitarianism. If the unborn matter significantly before they are born, then the case for the governments strongly promoting more births becomes enormous. If people only matter when they are born then new children can be said to be imposed on the childless and the current generation has no duties towards the future ones. These are unpalatable consequences either way."
Professor Paul Frijters
Professorial Research Fellow, CEP Wellbeing Programme, London School of Economics -
Neither agree nor disagree I have no comment on this.
Professor Carol Graham
Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution -
Completely agree Every day, countless sperm and ova do not result in actual people being born and government should not be concerned that that occurs. Instead, governments should concern themselves with actual people (and to some extent, with other sentient beings) - both present and future.
Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington -
Agree This is a difficult question. In line with methodological individualism, I would argue that the wellbeing of future generations is an aggregate of its members' wellbeing. One can only be a member of a generation if one exists. Then the "foregone wellbeing" of unborn children should not be part of such an intergenerational cost-benefit-analysis. Instead, what should be taken into account is the wellbeing effect on the prospective parents.
Professor Andreas Knabe
Professor (Chair in Public Economics), Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg -
Completely agree I don't think the unborn have a moral claim on the living. It is also difficult to see how one can count the wellbeing of the unborn without reaching the unpalatable conclusion that the living ought to dedicate their life to bringing to life as many babies as possible.
Professor Guy Mayraz
Lecturer, University of Sydney -
Agree The principle of taking into account the well-being of future generations to the same extent as current ones does not imply specific birth rates policies. Therefore, the hypothetical closure of an IVF clinic can affect the birth rate, but without changing that principle.
Professor Maurizio Pugno
Full Professor of Economics, University of Cassino -
Disagree "As I said before, differentiating between the present and the future is just a matter of generational perspective; thus, it doesn't make sense for present generations to apply an extremely high time discount rate to future well-being. I think well-being research needs further thinking about how to incorporate time in intergenerational analyses. There are always complicated questions, such as the handling of the well-being of an unborn person, and we know that there are major debates on abortion issues. Maybe, a case of reference would be the desire of reducing child mortality rates, which is based on the desire of exploiting to its fullness the potential well-being a life can offer."
Professor Mariano Rojas
Professor of Economics, Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla -
Neither agree nor disagree It is possible to identify arguments in favour or against the closure of the IVF clinic in the example based on the impact on wellbeing. This includes taking into account the impact of the children who might be born on the wellbeing of others (e.g. their parents) and on the impact on the mean level of wellbeing per person across society in a situation where the clinic is closed (in which case the wellbeing of the unborn children would not be counted) and in a situation where the clinic is not closed (in which case the wellbeing of the unborn children would be counted). However, this is fundamentally an ethical rather than an empirical issue around wellbeing .
Professor Conal Smith
Senior Associate at Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington -
Completely agree Yes if the greatest happiness principle is applied to the greatest number of people that exist, which is the common reading of the Greatest Happiness Principle. Interpreting 'the greatest number' as the largest possible human population is uncommon and conflicts practically with the original ethic. Breeding as much humans as possible would result in an ecological catatrophy and hence misery for many
Professor Ruut Veenhoven
Professor of Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam -
Completely agree I understand the term "unborn'" NOT to include embryos of a certain maturity. With this proviso, I completely agree: non-existing beings (a contradiction in terms) have no interests.
Professor Heinz Welsch
Professor of Economics, University of Oldenburg
Eight panel members disagreed or completely disagreed with the first statement, seven agreed or completely agreed, and four were in the middle.
Bruno Frey claimed equality of generations is standard to political economy, whilst Ruut Veenhoven also supported it on the basis of the “greatest happiness principle”. Arthur Grimes held the idea that people across generations should matter equally just as two current people should count the same. Bechetti noted that the entirety of future generations should matter more than just the current generation because the future is with more. Mariano Rojas and Maurizio Pugno made similar points. Andreas Knabe, whilst also supportive, warned that democratic politics is based on what current voters want, thus counting future generations depends on what voters want. That tension between current-voters and future-voters was also implicitly mentioned by Daniel Benjamin when he warned that the principle of equality over generations could lead to politically unacceptable absurdities. Yet he too supported the statement.
Exactly this tension between actual voters and future voters who might not actually get to be born was often mentioned by those disagreeing with the statement. Frijters simply states that the idea of equal generations is totally unworkable and against human nature, thus dismissing the statement as an absurdity. Mayraz notes in a similar vein: “the public does not see things this way, and policy makers cannot and ought not ignore the preferences of the public that they represent”. Welsch reminds us of the long ancestry of this conundrum, saying that ‘Adam Smith (1759), in his "'Theory of Moral Sentiments", may have been right in positing that moral duties come in different intensities depending on mental, spatial and temporal proximity, if only for pragmatic reasons.’
Some of those who disagreed brought up the practical problem that everything about the future is more uncertain than the present, and that a care about generations in the far future would thus swamp any short-run question with an infinitude of impossible-to-decide future uncertainties. Chris-Barrington-Leigh thus says equal treatment of generations is not practical and one must rely on (conservational) ideas. Ada Ferrer mentions a human rights lens as a practical alternative. Conal Smith argues for a capital-stock approach in which explicit counting of generations is not done, but there is a general duty to ‘pass on’ enough ‘capital stocks’ from generation to generation.
There were also those who disagreed with the statement because equal treatment of generations violates the notion of equal treatment of years of life. Carol Graham thus notes that the current generation has already lived several years and should thus count less than people of the future who have not started their lives yet.
The second statement was designed to make the question of whether future generations should matter more concrete. Nine panelists agreed with the second statement, five disagreed, and five were in the middle. So again, strong variations in opinions.
The main fault line in the panel turned out to be on whether the current generation should in any way take policy effects on fertility as ‘valid’. Those who agreed with the statement held it self-evident that what does not exist, even if it has actively been prevented from existing, should not count. Mayraz put this position succinctly by saying “I don't think the unborn have a moral claim on the living.” Bruno Frey calls it “common sense”. Welsh says “non-existing beings have no interests”. Andreas Knabe stated one should not count “foregone wellbeing” of those who do not exist.
Interestingly, many of those who disagreed also held their position to be common sense and self-evident. Bechetti drily noted “If a decision affects the likelihood that an individual is born or not it matters a lot”. Daniela Andren noted that “Procreation has impact”. Frijters notes that agreeing with the statement would imply that preventing all future generation from being born would not be a negative in itself, something he thinks of as inhuman. Ferrer also wants to count effects of policies on fertility. Mariano Rojas similarly disagreed with the statement and noted that “differentiating between the present and the future is just a matter of generational perspective”, implicitly saying the unborn are that future generation and hence preventing their birth matters. Martin Binder, whilst not agreeing or disagreeing, notes how normal it is to count opportunity costs in cost-benefit analysis in all other spheres of life, seeing no reason to make an exception for fertility.
Yet, a fundamental unease was noted on both sides of this statement, namely that IVF is not the only form of fertility and that to disagree with the statement implies a positive case for higher fertility (subject to sustainability, a point raised also by Ruut Veenhoven). As Arthur Grimes notes “Every day, countless sperm and ova do not result in actual people being born and government should not be concerned that that occurs.” Mayraz notes “It is also difficult to see how one can count the wellbeing of the unborn without reaching the unpalatable conclusion that the living ought to dedicate their life to bringing to life as many babies as possible.”. Frijters, who was on the opposite side of the statement, notes the same implication: “If the unborn matter significantly before they are born, then the case for the governments strongly promoting more births becomes enormous.”
One attempt to step away from the unease was to appeal to the idea that future generations will always occur no matter what and that one should care about them as a whole, independently of how many there are in a future generation. Pugno exemplifies that belief when saying “The principle of taking into account … future generations … does not imply specific birth rates policies.” Martin Binder similarly asks we care about the average of the wellbeing of a future generation (thus making their number unimportant as long as there is at least one).
Those who neither agreed nor disagreed (Beatton, Binder, Foster, Graham and Smith) basically noted all these issues. Chris Barrington Leigh said that this kind of difficulty illustrates why wellbeing science should not attempt to offer policy makers with cost-benefit analyses.
So perhaps the wisest answer on this statement came from Carol Graham: “I have no comment on this.”