On the equivalence between welfarism and equality of opportunity

摘要

A welfarist way of allocating resources consists in 1) equipping individuals with comparable indices of their well-being and 2) applying a unique aggregation rule to individual well-being levels. An equality of opportunity way of allocating resources consists in 1) making the distinction between personal characteristics which are under and beyond individuals control, and 2) decreasing inequalities due to differences in characteristics beyond individuals control. We show that under the proviso that indifferent individuals should not influence social judgements, welfarist and equal opportunity judgements on resource allocation are equivalent.This paper presents research results of the Belgian Program on Interuniversity Poles of Attraction initiated by the Belgian State, Prime Ministers Office, Science Policy Programming. I thank seminar participants at the Institute for Advanced Study and especially Eric Maskin for their comments, Louis Gevers and Yves Sprumont for stimulating discussions, and Walter Bossert, Marc Fleurbaey and two anonymous referees for detailed remarks and suggestions.