The Badness of Dying Early

A common intuition suggests that it is less bad for an infant to die than for a young adult to die. This is puzzling because the infant has more life ahead of her than a young adult, so it seems she loses more when she dies. Jeff McMahan supports the common intuition and defends it by means of what he calls the �Time-Relative Interest Account� of the badness of death. I shall describe two possible interpretations of the Time-Relative Interest Account and raise a problem for each. Then I shall offer an alternative defense of the common intuition, which is an extension of the theory in population ethics known as �critical-level utilitarianism.� Keywords: critical level, gradual creation, neutral level, relative value, value of life