Dean Spears
Biographic Data
| ID | 106317 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dean Spears |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dean |
| FAMILY NAME | Spears |
| SIGNATURE | SPEARS D |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7905-9192 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 98 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Ex Post Average Utilitarianism Can Be Worse for All Affected, Even If No Contingently Existing Person Is Affected
According to ex post average utilitarianism, prospect x is at least as good as prospect y if and only if the expected average well-being is at least as great in x as in y. Relative to the ex ante approach of taking the average of people’s expectations, this ex post approach has the advantage of not needing well-defined expectations of well-being for contingent people—people who exist in some but not all states of nature. Nevertheless, we show tha…
The Risk of Narrow, Disputable Results in the U.S. Electoral College
Close elections are important for many reasons, including that consequent election disputes can weaken democratic legitimacy and risk political violence. We quantify the probability of close outcomes in U.S. presidential races with novel applications of empirical election models from several sources. We show that razor-thin margins are very likely under the Electoral College (EC). And we establish that the EC causes this closeness: It would not o…
A Dominance Argument Against Incompleteness
This article presents a new argument against many forms of moral and prudential value incompleteness. The argument relies on two central principles: (i) a weak “negative dominance” principle, to the effect that lottery 1 is better than lottery 2 only if some possible outcome of lottery 1 is better than some possible outcome of lottery 2, and (ii) a weak form of ex ante Pareto, to the effect that, if lottery 1 gives an unambiguously better (stocha…
Equilibrium effects of abortion restrictions on cohort fertility
Excess neonatal mortality among private facility births in rural parts of high-mortality states of India
Redistribution, Rent-Seeking, and the Welfare Impact of a Universal Basic Income in India
What calibrating variable-value population ethics suggests
Variable-Value axiologies avoid Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion while satisfying some weak instances of the Mere Addition principle. We apply calibration methods to two leading members of the family of Variable-Value views conditional upon: first, a very weak instance of Mere Addition and, second, some plausible empirical assumptions about the size and welfare of the intertemporal world population. We find that such facts calibrate these two Variab…
Fiscal externalities and underinvestment in early-life human capital
We study policy instruments to correct inefficiently low investment in maternal nutrition in India, where one-fifth of all births occur. We focus on fiscal externalities: healthier babies become more productive adults, who pay more tax. However, parents do not internalize this externality, which, combined with other distortions, results in mothers weighing too little during pregnancy. We calibrate the first sufficient-statistics policy model for …
Reply to Aaron
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Egyptians, Aliens, and Okies
Grill (2023) defends the sum of averages view (SAV), on which the value of a population is found by summing the average welfare of each generation or birth cohort. A major advantage of SAV, according to Grill, is that it escapes the Egyptology objection to average utilitarianism. But, we argue, SAV escapes only the most literal understanding of this objection, since it still allows the value of adding a life to depend on facts about other, intuit…
Near-universal marriage, early childbearing, and low fertility
OBJECTIVE: To compare fertility in India to both low-to-middle-income and high-income countries (LMICs and HICs) and describe the patterns that have accompanied India's transition to low fertility. METHODS: We use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the United Nations (UN), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to observe factors associated with fertility decline in 36 Indian states and 76 countries…
Does the Repugnant Conclusion Have Important Implications for Axiology or for Public Policy?
Formal arguments have proven that avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion is impossible without rejecting one or more highly plausible population principles. To many, such proofs establish not only a deep challenge for axiology, but also pose an important practical problem of how policy-making can confidently proceed without resolving any of the central questions of population ethics. Here we offer deflationary responses: first to the practical challen…
Foundations of utilitarianism under risk and variable population
Mothers' Social Status and Children's Health
The premise that a woman's social status has intergenerational effects on her children's health has featured prominently in population science research and in development policy. This study focuses on an important case in which social hierarchy has such an effect. In joint patrilocal households in rural India, women married to the younger brother are assigned lower social rank than women married to the older brother in the same household. Almost …
Research Note
All leading long-term global population projections agree on continuing fertility decline, resulting in a rate of population size growth that will continue to decline toward zero and would eventually turn negative. However, scholarly and popular arguments have suggested that because fertility transmits intergenerationally (i.e., higher fertility parents tend to have higher fertility children) and is heterogeneous within a population, long-term po…
Those who can't sort, steal
Three important features of Indian labor markets enduringly coexist: rent-seeking, occupational immobility, and caste. These facts are puzzling, given theories that predict static, equilibrium social inequality without conflict. Our model explains these facts as an equilibrium outcome. Some people switch caste-associated occupations for an easier source of rents, rather than for productivity. This undermines trust between castes and shuts down oc…
Protecting the poor with a carbon tax and equal per capita dividend
Climate action with revenue recycling has benefits for poverty, inequality and well-being
Utilitarian benchmarks for emissions and pledges promote equity, climate and development
Repugnant conclusions
Population Ethics and the Prospects for Fertility Policy as Climate Mitigation Policy
What are the prospects for using population policy as tool to reduce carbon emissions? In this paper, we review evidence from population science, in order to inform debates in population ethics that, so far, have largely taken place within the academic philosophy literature. In particular, we ask whether fertility policy is likely to have a large effect on carbon emissions, and therefore on temperature change. Our answer is no. Prospects for a po…
The importance of health co-benefits under different climate policy cooperation frameworks
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions has the ‘co-benefit’ of also reducing air pollution and associated impacts on human health. Here, we incorporate health co-benefits into estimates of the optimal climate policy for three different climate policy regimes. The first fully internalizes the climate externality at the global level via a uniform carbon price (the ‘cooperative equilibrium’), thus minimizing total mitigation costs. The second connects to…
What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion
The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation, For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. (Parfit 1984: 388)
Endogenous inclusion in the Demographic and Health Survey anthropometric sample
Development economists study both anthropometry and intra-household allocation. In these literatures, the Demographic and Household Surveys (DHS) are essential. The DHS censors its anthropometric sample by age: only children under five are measured. We document several econometric consequences, especially for estimating birth-order effects. Child birth order and mothers' fertility are highly correlated in the age-censored anthropometric subsample…
Neonatal Death in India
We document a novel fact about neonatal death, or death in the first month of life. Globally, neonatal mortality is disproportionately concentrated in India. We identify a large effect of birth order on neonatal mortality that is unique to India: later-born siblings have a steep survival advantage relative to the birth-order gradient in other developing countries. We show that India’s high prevalence of maternal undernutrition and its correlation…
Exposure to open defecation can account for the Indian enigma of child height
Physical height is an important measure of human capital. However, differences in average height across developing countries are poorly explained by economic differences. Children in India are shorter than poorer children in Africa, a widely studied puzzle called "the Asian enigma." This paper proposes and quantitatively investigates the hypothesis that differences in sanitation - and especially in the population density of open defecation - can …
Health and Hunger
India's experience presents a puzzle at odds with a basic fact of household economics: amidst unprecedented economic growth, average per capita daily calorie consumption has declined in recent decades. Does an improving disease environment explain the calorie decline? A diminished burden of infectious disease could lower energy needs by increasing absorption and effective use of calories. We document a robust effect of disease exposure - measured…
Sanitation, Disease Externalities and Anaemia
Anaemia impairs physical and cognitive development in children and reduces human capital accumulation. The prior economics literature has focused on the role of inadequate nutrition in causing anaemia. This article is the first to show that sanitation, a public good, significantly contributes to preventing anaemia. We identify effects by exploiting rapid and differential improvement in sanitation across regions of Nepal between 2006 and 2011. Wit…
Switching to sanitation
Neonatal Death in India
We document a novel fact about neonatal death, or death in the first month of life. Globally, neonatal mortality is disproportionately concentrated in India. We identify a large effect of birth order on neonatal mortality that is unique to India: later-born siblings have a steep survival advantage relative to the birth-order gradient in other developing countries. We show that India’s high prevalence of maternal undernutrition and its correlation…
Local Social Inequality, Economic Inequality, and Disparities in Child Height in India
This study investigates disparities in child height—an important marker of population-level health—among population groups in rural India. India is an informative context in which to study processes of health disparities because of wide heterogeneity in the degree of local segregation or integration among caste groups. Building on a literature that identifies discrimination by quantifying whether differences in socioeconomic status (SES) can acco…
The Puzzle of Open Defecation in Rural India
Uniquely widespread and persistent open defecation in rural India has emerged as an important policy challenge and puzzle about behavioral choice in economic development. One candidate explanation is the culture of purity and pollution that reinforces and has its origins in the caste system. Although such a cultural account is inherently difficult to quantitatively test, we provide support for this explanation by comparing open defecation rates a…
Having a Son Promotes Clean Cooking Fuel Use in Urban India
Urban Indian households with a male first child are approximately 2 percentage points more likely to use clean cooking fuel than comparable households with a female first child. Given Indian son preference, there are at least two mechanisms by which child sex could affect fuel choice: by improving the intrahousehold status of women, who bear more of the costs of traditional fuels, or by presenting an opportunity to invest in children’s health, in…
Place and Child Health
A long literature in demography has debated the importance of place for health, especially children’s health. In this study, we assess whether the importance of dense settlement for infant mortality and child height is moderated by exposure to local sanitation behavior. Is open defecation (i.e., without a toilet or latrine) worse for infant mortality and child height where population density is greater? Is poor sanitation is an important mechanis…
What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion
The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation, For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. (Parfit 1984: 388)
Short-Term Labor Migration from Rural North India
Endogenous inclusion in the Demographic and Health Survey anthropometric sample
Development economists study both anthropometry and intra-household allocation. In these literatures, the Demographic and Household Surveys (DHS) are essential. The DHS censors its anthropometric sample by age: only children under five are measured. We document several econometric consequences, especially for estimating birth-order effects. Child birth order and mothers' fertility are highly correlated in the age-censored anthropometric subsample…
Who Is the Identifiable Victim? Caste and Charitable Giving in Modern India
Economists are increasingly studying the market for charitable giving, including behavioral aspects. In the “identifiable victim effect” people donate more to help identified individuals than groups. However, individuals from socially low-ranking groups may not prompt similar charity. The continuing depth of caste-based prejudice in contemporary India is widely debated. We report three randomized experiments conducted with computer-using Indian p…
Near-universal marriage, early childbearing, and low fertility
OBJECTIVE: To compare fertility in India to both low-to-middle-income and high-income countries (LMICs and HICs) and describe the patterns that have accompanied India's transition to low fertility. METHODS: We use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the United Nations (UN), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to observe factors associated with fertility decline in 36 Indian states and 76 countries…
Mothers' Social Status and Children's Health
The premise that a woman's social status has intergenerational effects on her children's health has featured prominently in population science research and in development policy. This study focuses on an important case in which social hierarchy has such an effect. In joint patrilocal households in rural India, women married to the younger brother are assigned lower social rank than women married to the older brother in the same household. Almost …
The Consequences of Social Inequality for the Health and Development of India's Children
Optimal population and exhaustible resource constraints
Height and cognitive achievement among Indian children
Low Expectations
Reference‐dependent decision‐making — the core of behavioral economics' prospect theory — makes people more likely to choose an outcome that they expect to receive. Reference‐dependence therefore may imply the perpetuation of disadvantage: people who do not expect an opportunity may be less likely to “seize the day” if one unexpectedly arrives. We find evidence of this possibility in labor supply decision‐making in two datasets about a high‐unemp…
Open Defecation and Childhood Stunting in India
Poor sanitation remains a major public health concern linked to several important health outcomes; emerging evidence indicates a link to childhood stunting. In India over half of the population defecates in the open; the prevalence of stunting remains very high. Recently published data on levels of stunting in 112 districts of India provide an opportunity to explore the relationship between levels of open defecation and stunting within this popul…
Caste, ‘Cleanliness’ and Cash
Even compared with neighbouring countries, latrine use is especially uncommon in India. How might caste - historically associated with sanitation inequality - interact with government sanitation policy? Using data from Rajasthan state, we investigate the effect of caste-based reservations for village chairmen elected in 2005 on the likelihood of winning the government's Clean Village Prize by mid 2012. This prize is a large cash award for village…
What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Poorer
A growing literature documents links between early-life health and human capital, and between human capital and adult wages. Although most of this literature has focused on developed countries, economists have hypothesized that effects of early-life health on adult economic outcomes could be even greater in developing countries. This paper asks whether the early-life disease environment in India influences adult economic wages. The paper uses two…
Having a Son Promotes Clean Cooking Fuel Use in Urban India
Urban Indian households with a male first child are approximately 2 percentage points more likely to use clean cooking fuel than comparable households with a female first child. Given Indian son preference, there are at least two mechanisms by which child sex could affect fuel choice: by improving the intrahousehold status of women, who bear more of the costs of traditional fuels, or by presenting an opportunity to invest in children’s health, in…
What doesn't kill you makes you poorer
A growing literature indicates that effects of early-life health on adult economic outcomes could be substantial in developing countries, but the magnitude of this effect is debated. We document a robust gradient between the early-life mortality environment to which men in India were locally exposed in their district and year of birth and the wages that they earn as adults. A 1 percentage point reduction in infant mortality (or 10 point reduction…
Short-Term Labor Migration from Rural North India
Can collective action strategies motivate behaviour change to reduce open defecation in rural India?
The world’s remaining open defecation is increasingly concentrated in rural India. The Indian Government’s efforts to reduce open defecation by providing subsidies for latrine construction have been largely unsuccessful in addressing the problem. It is now clear that behaviour change must be the priority if progress on ending open defecation is to be made. While community-led strategies have proven effective in various developing country contexts…
Disease externalities and net nutrition
Child height is an important indicator of human capital and human development, in large part because early life health and net nutrition shape both child height and adult economic productivity and health. Between 2005 and 2010, the average height of children under 5 in Cambodia significantly increased. What contributed to this improvement? Recent evidence suggests that exposure to poor sanitation - and specifically to widespread open defecation -…
Who Is the Identifiable Victim? Caste and Charitable Giving in Modern India
Economists are increasingly studying the market for charitable giving, including behavioral aspects. In the “identifiable victim effect” people donate more to help identified individuals than groups. However, individuals from socially low-ranking groups may not prompt similar charity. The continuing depth of caste-based prejudice in contemporary India is widely debated. We report three randomized experiments conducted with computer-using Indian p…
Optimal population and exhaustible resource constraints
Place and Child Health
A long literature in demography has debated the importance of place for health, especially children’s health. In this study, we assess whether the importance of dense settlement for infant mortality and child height is moderated by exposure to local sanitation behavior. Is open defecation (i.e., without a toilet or latrine) worse for infant mortality and child height where population density is greater? Is poor sanitation is an important mechanis…
Health and Hunger
India's experience presents a puzzle at odds with a basic fact of household economics: amidst unprecedented economic growth, average per capita daily calorie consumption has declined in recent decades. Does an improving disease environment explain the calorie decline? A diminished burden of infectious disease could lower energy needs by increasing absorption and effective use of calories. We document a robust effect of disease exposure - measured…
Switching to sanitation
Sanitation and Religion in South Asia
Exposure to open defecation has serious consequences for child mortality, health, and human capital development. South Asia has the highest rates of open defecation worldwide, and although the incidence declines as household income rises, differences across South Asian countries are not explained by differences in per capita income. The rate of open defecation in sub-national regions of Bangladesh, India and Nepal is highly correlated with the fr…
The Social Cost of Carbon
We analyze the role of ethical values in the determination of the social cost of carbon, arguing that the familiar debate about discounting is too narrow. Other ethical issues are equally important to computing the social cost of carbon, and we highlight inequality, risk, and population ethics. Although the usual approach, in the economics of costbenefit analysis for climate policy, is confined to a utilitarian axiology, the methodology of the so…
Exposure to open defecation can account for the Indian enigma of child height
Physical height is an important measure of human capital. However, differences in average height across developing countries are poorly explained by economic differences. Children in India are shorter than poorer children in Africa, a widely studied puzzle called "the Asian enigma." This paper proposes and quantitatively investigates the hypothesis that differences in sanitation - and especially in the population density of open defecation - can …
Sanitation, Disease Externalities and Anaemia
Anaemia impairs physical and cognitive development in children and reduces human capital accumulation. The prior economics literature has focused on the role of inadequate nutrition in causing anaemia. This article is the first to show that sanitation, a public good, significantly contributes to preventing anaemia. We identify effects by exploiting rapid and differential improvement in sanitation across regions of Nepal between 2006 and 2011. Wit…
The implications of three major new trials for the effect of water, sanitation and hygiene on childhood diarrhea and stunting
BACKGROUND: Three large new trials of unprecedented scale and cost, which included novel factorial designs, have found no effect of basic water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions on childhood stunting, and only mixed effects on childhood diarrhea. Arriving at the inception of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, and the bold new target of safely managed water, sanitation and hygiene for all by 2030, these results warrant t…
Local Social Inequality, Economic Inequality, and Disparities in Child Height in India
This study investigates disparities in child height—an important marker of population-level health—among population groups in rural India. India is an informative context in which to study processes of health disparities because of wide heterogeneity in the degree of local segregation or integration among caste groups. Building on a literature that identifies discrimination by quantifying whether differences in socioeconomic status (SES) can acco…
The Puzzle of Open Defecation in Rural India
Uniquely widespread and persistent open defecation in rural India has emerged as an important policy challenge and puzzle about behavioral choice in economic development. One candidate explanation is the culture of purity and pollution that reinforces and has its origins in the caste system. Although such a cultural account is inherently difficult to quantitatively test, we provide support for this explanation by comparing open defecation rates a…
The Consequences of Social Inequality for the Health and Development of India's Children
Public Policy, Consequentialism, the Environment, and Nonhuman Animals
The focus of this chapter is public policy and consequentialism, especially issues that arise in connection with the environment—that is, the natural world, including nonhuman animals. We integrate some of the existing literature on environmental economics, welfare economics, and policy with the literature on environmental values and philosophy. The emphasis on environmental policy is motivated by the fact that it is arguably the most philosophic…
Persisting Prejudice
We present results from a new representative telephonic survey, which confirms persistence of conservative gender and caste attitudes. In particular, we find that high proportions of men and women in all of the social groups we study disapprove of women working outside the home, say that it is acceptable for husbands to beat their wives, and would object to relatives marrying a Dalit person. By analyzing data from the National Family Health Surve…
Economics (36 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Population (23 works) · Demography (22 works) · Economic growth (21 works) · Geography (18 works) · Political science (18 works) · Medicine (17 works) · Child Nutrition and Water Access (16 works) · Demography (15 works)