Yew-Kwang Ng

Yew-Kwang Ng (born 7 August 1942) is a Malaysian economist. He is currently Special Chair Professor at Fudan University and Emeritus Professor at Monash University, and sits on the Board of Advisors of the Global Priorities Institute.

Ng’s contributions to welfare biology,^[1][2][3] welfare economics,^[4][5] population ethics,^[6] the ethics of existential risk,^[7][8][9] the measurement of wellbeing,^[10] and the rehabilitation of utilitarianism^[11][12][13] make him a figure of central importance in the history of effective altruism.

Ng’s welfare economics textbook is dedicated to “the welfare of all sentients.”^[14] His latest book is Happiness—Concept, Measurement and Promotion.^[15]

Further reading

Carpendale, Max (2015) Welfare biology as an extension of biology: interview with Yew-Kwang Ng, Relations, vol. 3, pp. 197–202.

Ng, Yew-Kwang (2019) Global extinction and animal welfare: two priorities for effective altruism, Global Policy, vol. 10, pp. 258–266.

Wiblin, Robert & Keiran Harris (2018) Prof Yew-Kwang Ng on ethics and how to create a much happier world, 80,000 Hours, July 26.

Related entries

human extinction | population ethics | utilitarianism | welfare biology | welfare economics | welfarism | wellbeing

1. ^

   Ng, Yew-Kwang (1995) Towards welfare biology: evolutionary economics of animal consciousness and suffering, Biology and Philosophy, vol. 10, pp. 255–285.

2. ^

   Ng, Yew-Kwang (2016) How welfare biology and commonsense may help to reduce animal suffering, Animal Sentience, vol. 7, pp. 1–10.

3. ^

   Groff, Zach & Yew-Kwang Ng (2019) Does suffering dominate enjoyment in the animal kingdom? An update to welfare biology, Biology and Philosophy, vol. 34, pp. 1–16.

4. ^

   Ng, Yew-Kwang (1979) Welfare Economics: Introduction and Development of Basic Concepts, London: Macmillan.

5. ^

   Ng, Yew-Kwang (2004) Welfare Economics: Towards a More Complete Analysis, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

6. ^

   Ng, Yew-Kwang (1989) What should we do about future generations? Impossibility of Parfit’s Theory X, Economics and Philosophy, vol. 5, pp. 235–253.

7. ^

   Ng, Yew-Kwang (1993) Should we be very cautious or extremely cautious on measures that may involve our destruction, Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 10, pp. 223–247.

8. ^

   Ng, Yew-Kwang (2011) Consumption tradeoff vs. catastrophes avoidance: implications of some recent results in happiness studies on the economics of climate change, Climatic Change, vol. 105, pp. 109–127.

9. ^

   Ng, Yew-Kwang (2016) The importance of global extinction in climate change policy, Global Policy, vol. 7, pp. 315–322.

10. ^

    Ng, Yew-Kwang (1997) A case for happiness, cardinalism, and interpersonal comparability, The Economic Journal, vol. 107, pp. 1848–1858.

11. ^

    Ng, Yew-Kwang & Peter Singer (1981) An argument for utilitarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 11, pp. 229–239.

12. ^

    Ng, Yew-Kwang (1990) Welfarism and utilitarianism: a rehabilitation, Utilitas, vol. 2, pp. 171–193.

13. ^

    Ng, Yew-Kwang (2000) From separability to unweighted sum: a case for utilitarianism, Theory and Decision, vol. 49, pp. 229–312.

14. ^

    Ng, Welfare Economics: Introduction and Development of Basic Concepts, p. vi.

15. ^

    Ng, Yew-Kwang (2022) Happiness: Concept, Measurement and Promotion, Singapore: Springer.