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Economic growth is typically measured in per capita terms. A
long tradition in philosophy, however, suggests that social welfare
may depend on the number of people as well. To illustrate how
much this matters quantitatively, we decompose welfare growth —
measured in consumption-equivalent (CE) units — into contributions
from rising population and rising per capita consumption.
Because of diminishing marginal utility from consumption, population
growth is scaled up by a value-of-life factor that empirically
averages nearly 3 across countries since 1960. Population
increases are therefore a major contributor to growth if one takes
a total utilitarian perspective.
