Casal and Williams Equality CH 7 PDF

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Equality
1
PAULA CASAL AND ANDREW WILLIAMS
Chapter Contents
Introduction
Justice as fairness
Equality of resources
Equality, priority, and sufciency
Equality and interpersonal comparison
Equality, opportunity,
and responsibility
Conclusion
Readers Guide
This chapter begins by outlining the place of equality in the two leading contemporary
theories of economic justice: John Rawls conception of justice as fairness and Ronald
Dworkins account of equality of resources. It then examines three debates that these
authors have helped to shape. The rst debate arises between egalitarians and various
inuential critics, who appeal to the importance of achieving efciency and avoiding
certain forms of absolute deprivation. The other two debates take place among egalitarians
and relate to the respects in which individuals lives should be equal, and the degree to
which choice and personal responsibility must gure in any plausible account of equality.
The case study draws on the latter two debates to consider how to allocate responsibility
for the decision to become a parent.
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Paula Casal and Andrew Williams 150
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Introduction
Political theorists address questions about the distribution and the exercise of legitimate
political authority. Thus, they ask who has the right to rule? and propose various answers
relating to whose commands members of a state have enforceable moral duties to obey.
See chapter 1
Asking what is it to rule rightly?, they make further claims about how those who possess
the right to rule should exercise that right. Within Western societies, a consensus has
emerged favouring egalitarian accounts of the distribution of political authority. Thus,
widespread agreement exists that ultimate political authority should be shared equally
through a set of democratic institutions.
See chapter 4
BOX 7.1
Domestic inequality
Between 1979 and 2005, the top 5 per cent of US families saw their real incomes increase
by 81 per cent. Over the same period, the 20 per cent on the lowest incomes saw their real
incomes decline by 1 per cent.
(US Census Bureau, 2005)
In 1962, the wealth of the richest 1 per cent of US households was roughly 125 times
greater than that of the typical household. By 2004, it was 190 times greater.
(Economic Policy Institute, 2007, Figure 5B, available online at
http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig/05/SWA06 Fig5B.jpg)
From 1960 to 1999, the US average national income in real terms doubled. The level of a
production workers pay, and of the minimum wage, hardly changed at all, while the salaries
of chief executive ofcers of companies expanded by a multiple of 11.
(Sutcliffe, 2002, p.16)
The richest 1 per cent of US households now owns 34.3 per cent of the nations private
wealth, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 per cent. The top 1 per cent also
owns 36.9 per cent of all corporate stock.
(Economic Policy Institute, 2007, Table 5.1, available online at
http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig/05/SWA06 Tab5.1.jpg, and Figure 5F, available
online at http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig/05/SWA06 Fig5F.jpg)
The top 1 per cent of US families in 2005 received 21.8 per cent of all pre-tax income,
more than double what that gure was in the 1970s. This is the greatest concentration of
income since 1929.
(Piketty and Saez, 2003, Figure 1, updated to 2005, available online at
http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/saez/TabFig2005.xls)
Inequality in the United Kingdom is greater than it has been for the past forty years and
more people have moved below the poverty line in the last fteen years. Average households
(that is, those that are neither poor nor wealthy) have been diminishing in number, and
gradually disappearing from London and the south-east.
(Dorling et al., 2007, available online at
http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/housing/2077.asp)
151 Equality
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Turning to the exercise of political authority, a second consensus exists that ruling
rightly requires attaching equal importance to each citizens life. Such a requirement of
impartiality among citizens rejects certain considerations as grounds for political action.
For example, it denies that a citizens race or gender is itself a good reason to attach less
importance to beneting him or her rather than someone else, and so opposes extreme
forms of racism or sexism. So construed, however, an insistence on impartiality still
leaves unanswered many questions about howpolitical authority should be exercised. For
example, it is silent about whether governments are required to protect individuals from
suffering worse prospects in life because of their race or gender, or because of some other
unavoidable characteristic. We now turn to these more controversial questions about the
demands of equality, and their implications for the exercise of political authority and the
design of economic institutions. Our starting point is the outstanding work of twentieth
century political theory, John Rawls A Theory of Justice (1971).
Justice as fairness
The aim of Rawls A Theory of Justice (1971; 1999) is to identify a set of plausible
principles of social justice (pp. 310). As Rawls explains the terms, principles of
justice provide uncompromising, or especially weighty, moral standards for resolving
individuals competing claims. Principles of social justice resolve claims on the design
of the basic structurethat is, a set of major social institutions that distribute rights
and dutiesand exert profound inuence on individuals life prospects. Because the
basic structure encompasses, among other things, legislation and government policies,
the principles are guides to the exercise of political authority.
According to utilitarianism, whether the exercise of authority is justiable depends
ultimately on what maximizes the sum of benets and burdens. In contrast, Rawls rejects
purely aggregative principles. He argues that, even if utilitarians are right that those
principles may guide distributive decisions across different stages in one life, extending
them across different lives is a mistake, because it fails to take seriously the distinction
between persons (1971; 1999, p. 24).
In Rawls account, because society is comprised of separate persons, distribution is of
fundamental importance. For example, it is deeply unfair that some individuals should
have far worse career prospects than those of others merely because of their class origins
or family background, rather than their different ambitions and natural talents. To
correct such inequalities, Rawls advocates a principle of fair equality of opportunity,
which requires that similarly motivated and naturally talented individuals enjoy the same
prospects in the competition for jobs (1971; 1999, Pt 12).
Rawls also recognizes that individuals can have less income and wealth than others
due to their class origins or their being endowed by nature with fewer marketable talents.
He argues that it would be arbitrary to be concerned only with inequalities arising from
the social lottery and not the natural lottery, and then proposes a novel solution to the
problem of how to distribute income and wealth.
The solution assumes that it would be implausibly wasteful to oppose all economic
inequalities. Doing so would, for example, impede rms using unequal wage rates
....................................................................................................
as incentives for especially talented individuals to pursue more productive occupa-
tions that benet everyone. Thus, Rawls rejects a strict egalitarian principle, which
opposes economic inequality regardless of its harming anyone, instead proposing the
difference principle, which permits inequalitiesthat is, differences in income and
wealth, but requires that they be arranged to benet the least advantaged to the
greatest extent possible. Although not as strict as some alternatives, the difference prin-
ciple remains genuinely egalitarian, because it treats equality as a baseline and then
permits expansions in inequality only if they are not harmful to those who benet
least. Because the difference principle does not require such expansions, it also dif-
fers from a maximizing principle that favours continually increasing the income and
wealth of the least advantaged, regardless of its environmental impact (Rawls, 2001, pp.
634).
Rawls also recognizes that economic inequalities that enhance the income and wealth
of the least advantaged, and are licensed by the difference principle, might be harmful
in other respects. For example, they might still be large enough to jeopardize fairness
in the labour market and democratic process, or equality before the law. These harmful
inequalities are governed by additional principles that deepen even further egalitarian
character of justice as fairness.
As mentioned, the principle of fair equalityof opportunityalreadyrequires governments
to address labour market inequalities arising from discrimination and other differences
in social luck. Note, too, that Rawls defends another principle of social justice: the basic
liberty principle, which restricts inequality still further by insisting on upholding the fair
value of rights to participate in the political system and not merely more familiar civil
liberties. Thus, justice as fairness condemns inequality when it corrupts the democratic
process by allowing the rich to buy political power.
For a fuller understanding of how justice as fairness regulates inequality, then, we need
to bear in mind how Rawls orders his various principles:
FIRST PRINCIPLE
Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic
liberties compatible with a similar liberty for all.
SECOND PRINCIPLE
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
(a) to the greatest benet of the least advantaged . . . and
(b) attached to ofces and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of
opportunity.
(Rawls, 1999, p. 266)
Rawls rst principle grants individuals basic civil liberties, such as equality before the
law and freedom of speech, as well as rights to participate in the democratic process on a
fair basis. The second principle, known as democratic equality, comprises:
the difference principle; and
the principle of fair equality of opportunity.
153 Equality
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In sufciently developed societies, Rawls treats these principles as in lexical order. Thus,
the rst principle may not be compromised to any degree to better realize democratic
equality and equality of opportunity enjoys similar priority over the difference principle.
Because Rawls principles function as a set of lters on unjust inequalities, even if
an inequality survives the difference principle, it may still be ruled out by other more
weighty principles. One might, however, oppose large economic inequalities, because
of deleterious consequences that Rawls principles leave unmentioned. For example,
expansions in economic inequality arguably diminish health and longevity, regardless
of their effects on absolute income levels. This may explain why wealthy, but unequal,
countriessuch as the USAperform so poorly in terms of health and why less
wealthy, but more equal, countriessuch as Cubaperform so well (Daniels, 2001).
Economic inequality also correlates positively with crime and violence, both within
and across countries, and even after controlling for other determinants (Fajnzylber
et al., 2002).
Justice as fairness leaves questions concerning illness, mortality, death, crime, and
violence largely unanswered. As Rawls notes, justice as fairness is an incomplete theory,
which deals with only a limited number of issues. It is also an ideal theory, proposed for
situations of full compliance rather than partial compliance. Thus, it states what justice
requires if individuals generally conform to its demands and so says little about how to
respond when individuals act unjustly. We should not assume, then, that Rawls claims
that his principles exhaust the reasons to restrict economic inequality or that his theory
cannot be developed to provide additional considerations. For example, Rawls concern
with maintaining the social basis for self-respect might also justify limits on stigmatizing
differences in living standards (Scanlon, 2000, Pt II).
Having been the subject of such intense scrutiny, it is unsurprising that democratic
equality has provoked objections, and there are three important examples that bear on
our later remarks. The rst objection comes from the right of the political spectrum and
claims that, like other egalitarians, Rawls gives too little scope for individuals to exercise
certain economic liberties (Nozick, 1974, ch. 7). Those who press this objection assume
that individuals have rights to use and transfer their holdings as they see t, even if doing
so, for example, creates the type of class-based inequalities that jeopardize fair equality of
opportunity.
The second objection comes from the opposite end of the spectrum and claims that
Rawls exaggerates the degree to which justice permits inequality. There are two distinct
versions of this charge. The rst claims that Rawls fails to recognize that fairness and
efciency can be conicting values, and that inequalities are unfair even when eliminating
them would make nobody any better off (Temkin, 2000). The second does not assume
the fairness and efciency conict, but instead claims that Rawls fails to recognize that his
difference principle should apply not only to public policies, but also to individual wage
negotiation and career choices. As a result, he mistakenly regards as just many inequality-
generating incentives that are necessary to motivate individuals simply because they fail
to comply with the demands of justice (Cohen, 1991; 1997).
The third objection arises naturally from a utilitarian perspective and claims that
rejecting all economic inequalities that are harmful to the least advantaged is too
extremefor example, because it rules out distributions that impose very small losses
on the least advantaged, but yield enormous gains to everybody else.
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KEY TEXTS 7.1
Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001)
After publishing his masterpiece, A Theory of Justice, in 1971, Rawls continued to rene
his conception of justice as fairness and to develop a more general conception of political
liberalism. He also regularly taught at Harvard and the extensive lecture notes he provided
for his students eventually developed into the Restatement. This later volume explains
the intuitive ideas that animate justice as fairness and claries the content of, and main
arguments for, Rawls principles of justice. As well as discussing how those principles might
be institutionalized by a property-owning democracy and become stable, the volume also
contains replies to criticisms of various aspects of justice as fairness, including its treatment
of the family and of variations in capability.
KEY POINTS
Rawls opposes utilitarian principles, because they overlook the moral importance of how
benets and burdens are distributed.
Rawls conception of democratic equality applies to a societys major institutions or basic
structure.
Different critics have objected that democratic equality affords too small a role to economic
liberties, exaggerates the degree to which justice permits inequality, and sometimes makes
excessive demands on the more fortunate.
Equality of resources
Dworkins theory of equality of resources nds its fullest expression in his book, Sovereign
Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality. (1981b; 2000). The theory begins with the
assumption that displaying equal concern for all of those obliged to obey their commands
is the price that those possessing political authority must pay for their right to rule.
As Dworkin emphasizes, the requirement of equal concern need not extend to all of
humanity or apply to decisions that do not involve the exercise of authority. Dworkin
then argues that the best interpretation of equal concern demands that the economy is
arranged to produce results that might have emerged from an imaginary procedure in
which markets play a dening role.
To illustrate the procedure, Dworkin imagines shipwreck survivors, who must divide
a desert islands resources equally among themselves. Any division, he suggests, should
satisfy an appropriate version of what economists term the envy test and so will ensure
that nobody prefers anyone elses initial share of resources. Dworkin then argues that
the most appealing way to eliminate envy is through an auction, in which everyone has
155 Equality
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KEY TEXTS 7.2
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (2000)
After Rawls A Theory of Justice (1971), this is the most inuential contemporary statement
of liberal egalitarianism. Rejecting equality of welfare, Dworkin defends his own conception
of equality of resources and explains the role that it affords to civil liberties, democracy, and
community. Dworkin also applies his theory to various debates about public policy regarding
health care, campaign nance legislation, afrmative action, and genetic intervention. Others
have developed Dworkins ideas in more radical waysmost notably Philippe Van Parijs, who
employs resource egalitarian arguments to defend the provision of a universal basic income
in Real Freedom for All (1996).
the same bidding power, and in which the auctioneer continuously divides lots until the
market clears and no bidder wishes to repeat the process.
The procedure thenbecomes more complex, because Dworkinassumes that individuals
should be free to make different choices about production, investment, and trade. Where
individuals vary only in their preferences, he argues that those who succeed in more
productive endeavours are entitled to a higher income. Dworkin recognizes, however,
that the outcome of the social and natural lottery will also exert a profound inuence
on individuals relative prospects. Like Rawls, he assumes that economic institutions
should enable individuals to share fairly in each others fortunes. Nevertheless, Dworkin
rejects democratic equality as insufciently sensitive to individuals ambitions. Instead,
he favours a form of luck sharing, in which individuals personal values play a much
larger role in determining how much protection against misfortune equality requires.
Dworkindefends his alternative proposal by distinguishing luck inthe choices individu-
als makethat is, their option luckand luck in the conditions that they face regardless
of their choicesthat is, their brute luck. He argues that inequalities arising from
variations in option luck against a fair background should be treated very differently from
inequalities arising from variations in brute luck. For example, suppose some islanders
choose to gamble with their justly held initial holdings, have bad option luck, and lose.
If this is the case, there need be no reason to object to their having fewer resources than
those who declined to gamble, or who chose the same gamble, but had better option luck.
If some islanders are born blind while others are sighted, however, or if some have higher
incomes because they are more naturally gifted rather than more industrious, then there is
a weighty reasonto redress suchmisfortunesbut howmuchredress does justice require?
Relying on his assumption that individuals should be free to expose themselves to
different degrees of luck, Dworkins answer appeals to the idea of a fair insurance market.
To describe such a hypothetical market, he assumes that decisions will reect individuals
actual preferences and attitudes to risk. Unlike in actual insurance markets, however,
individuals are situated equally. Thus, they can afford the same insurance packages, and
are aware only of the overall distribution of misfortune and not their own place in the
distribution. Given limited information about the level of protection and premium that
each individual would prefer, Dworkin argues that individuals should receive the average
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KEY THINKERS 7.1
Ronald Dworkin (1931)
One of the worlds leading legal, moral, and political philosophers, as a legal philosopher,
Dworkin is best known for Taking Rights Seriously (1977) and Laws Empire (1986), which
provide an alternative to legal positivism. As a moral philosopher, he is known for his
discussion of abortion and euthanasia in Lifes Dominion (1993) and as political philosopher
for his defence of liberal egalitarianism in Sovereign Virtue (2000). He has also made many
inuential contributions to public debates about US Supreme Court decisions, often via The
New York Review of Books.
level of protection that would be purchased in such a market. He recommends funding
such protection by a system of general taxation, which includes a progressive income tax.
To summarize, then, fromDworkins perspective, an actual distribution of income and
wealth is equal only if the individuals involved might have produced such a distribution
through a specic market process. The process involves those individuals exercising
certain rights to produce and trade, using resources that they have acquired in an equal
auction, and pooling risks through a fair insurance market. If information is available
about each individuals behaviour in such a market, then each should be compensated
for misfortune to a degree that depends on the level of insurance that they would have
purchased. In the absence of such individualized information and to minimize the risk of
overcompensation or under-compensating, the level of compensation should depend on
that which the average insurer would have purchased.
There are important theoretical differences between equality of resources and demo-
cratic equality. In dening an equal distribution, Dworkin attaches more importance than
Rawls to market freedoms and, in particular, to the freedom to choose which level of pro-
tectionagainst misfortune to assume. Thus, althoughboththeorists appeal to hypothetical
agreement from behind a veil of ignorancethat is, in a situation of limited informa-
tionDworkin employs a thinner veil, which allows decision makers to be guided by
personal preferences. As a result, Dworkin recommends a more ambition-sensitive form
of luck sharing in which what qualies as relative misfortune, as well the appropriate form
and level of redress, varies depending on the preferences of the individuals concerned.
KEY POINTS
Dworkin claims that those in authority should display equal concern for the lives of all of
their subjects by meeting the demands of equality of resources.
Equality of resources evaluates different distributions by appealing to a hypothetical market
procedure, which includes a fair insurance market.
Democratic equality and equality of resources both require individuals to share in each
others fortunes, but Dworkins view does so in a manner that is more sensitive to
individuals values and attitudes to risk.
157 Equality
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Equality, priority, and sufciency
We now turn to draw some distinctions that cast light on the variety of egalitarian
principles available, as well as two inuential objections to egalitarianism.
One distinction depends on whether a principle attaches any importance to an
individuals level of advantage relative to others when determining the reasons to benet
that individual. Comparative egalitarian principles imply relative position does matter. As
an example, consider the strict egalitarian principle mentioned earlier, according to which
it is bad, or unfair, if some individuals are worse off than others. This principle faces an
inuential criticism, which Derek Parts illuminating essay Equality or priority? (2000)
dubs the levelling down objection. The objection points out that the strict principle
implies that it would be better, in one way, if everyone were to be blind rather than if
some were to be blind and others sighted. It assumes that such a conclusion is highly
implausible and infers that we should reject strict egalitarian principles.
There are various ways in which to argue that the levelling down objection fails to
show that we should reject all egalitarian principles. The rst replythat of pluralist
egalitarianismreiterates that the strict principle implies only that levelling down is
better in some respect rather than all things considered. Pluralist egalitarians argue that
our reluctance to waste benets therefore shows only that the pursuit of equality, like
many other values, must sometimes be tempered to respect other values; it does not, they
insist, show that equality lacks any value whatsoever. The second conditional egalitarian
reply (Temkin, 2000, p.157) suggests that we should apply comparative principles to
choose only among non-wasteful distributions. As suggested earlier, democratic equality
provides one example of this type of reply. Under certain conditions, as Rawls notes,
the difference principle recommends choosing the most egalitarian member of the set of
non-wasteful distributions (Rawls, 2000, p. 61).
The most radical reply abandons the concern with relative position that is characteristic
of comparative principles. The reply appeals to what Part terms the priority view, or
prioritarianism (2000, p. 101). According to this non-comparative egalitarian principle,
the moral value of beneting each individual diminishes as the individuals absolute level
of advantage increases (Raz, 1986, ch. 9). The priority view implies that it is, in one way,
better to provide some benet to a less well-off individual than a better-off individual.
As a result, it tends to favour the less advantaged when their interests conict with the
more advantaged and so qualies as egalitarian in a broad sense of the term. To justify
favouring the less advantaged, however, the priority view appeals only to the absolute
condition of each individual. For this reason, prioritarians need not assume that reducing
the gap between the better and worse off has any non-instrumental value, or that we have
any reason to waste benets when doing so diminishes inequality. Thus, prioritarians can
escape the levelling down objection more easily than can comparative egalitarians.
2
The priority view has a second attraction, because it can take more moderate, as well
as more extreme, forms. Extreme prioritarianism gives absolute priority to the interests
of the less advantaged over those of the more fortunate. This form of prioritarianism
resembles the difference principle in that both positions prohibit beneting better-off
individuals if doing so deprives the least advantaged of any benets; moreover, they do
so even when those benets are very large and can be produced at very small cost to the
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less advantaged. As mentioned, some critics object to the difference principle, because it
displays suchrigidity. Rawls has repliedby insisting that his principles shouldbe assessedas
a package andsuggesting that the type of situationjust mentioned is very unlikely to occur,
especially when his prior principles are satised (2001, p. 67). A different reply is available
to prioritarians. They canadopt the moderate priority view, whichrequires attaching non-
absolute priority to the interests of the less advantaged. From this perspective, whether
there is decisive reason to benet the less fortunate rather than more fortunate can depend
on, for example, the size of the benets at stake and the number of individuals involved.
For illustration, suppose that a government must choose between funding a medical
programme that provides a modest benet to a small group of very badly off individuals
or one that provides a bigger benet to a larger group of less badly off individuals. The
policy implications of moderate prioritarianism, like those of the pluralist comparative
view, are indeterminate until weights are attached to the various factors that the two views
deemrelevant. This suggests that prioritarians must pay a price for escaping the rigidity of
the extreme viewnamely, increased reliance on appeals to intuitive judgements likely
to resist systematic formulation (Williams, 2004).
We shall conclude this section by drawing a further distinction between the types of
egalitarian principle canvassed so far and sufciency principles. These principles claim
that, when evaluating distributions, what ultimately matters is whether individuals have
enough to escape absolute deprivation or to live above some critical threshold. Thus, the
moral importance of individuals having enough is not explained by the further benecial
consequences of them doing so. If reaching a particular thresholdfor example, being
well nourished or literatehad such consequences, then prioritarians would already
attach great importance to securing these crucial benets, given their commitment to
taking the size of benets into account.
Arguments based on sufciency principles play a valuable role in public affairs by
stating that the eradication of poverty, at home and abroad, is an urgent responsibility
of government. Such principles also play a more negative role in a second inuential
objection to egalitarianism. The objection is pressed by anti-egalitarian sufcientarians
who argue that, once everyone has enough, there is no reason to reduce inequality
or to attach priority to the less advantaged (Frankfurt, 1987; Crisp, 2003). There are
various forms that such a position might take, depending on whether it requires simply
minimizing the number of individuals who suffer absolute deprivation or attaches
importance to distribution below the threshold.
There are also various ways in which egalitarians can reply to the sufcientarian critique
(Casal, 2007). The most obvious reply claims that thresholds are usually points on a
continuous scale and that locating them at any particular point is likely to be arbitrary.
For example, even the idea of a subsistence income is more complex and contestable than
it at rst appears, because it is dened by reference to some standard life expectancy.
Further distinct replies arise depending on where the threshold is located. Thus, lower
thresholds make it less plausible for the sufcientarian to claim that, when everyone has
enough, even large inequalities are unimportant; higher thresholds make it less plausible
to insist on maximizing the number of individuals who have enough, because, then, far
too many individuals may be sacriced in order to ensure that a small number attain
some ambitious threshold. Triage may be plausible on the battleeld when survival is at
stake, but appears much less plausible as the relevant threshold is raised.
159 Equality
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KEY CONCEPTS 7.1
Principles of distributive justice: equality, priority, and sufficiency
Egalitarians believe that it is non-instrumentally bad, or unfair, if some individuals are worse
off than others. Prioritarians believe that the moral value of a benet, or disvalue of a burden,
diminishes as its recipient becomes better off on an absolute, rather than relative, scale.
They need not believe that inequality, which is a comparative notion, is non-instrumentally
bad. Sufcientarians also reject egalitarian comparisons of the relative position of individuals
and focus instead on whether individuals have enough not to fall below some critical level of
advantage.
Perhaps the most effective reply to the sufcientarian critique points out that there are
more or less egalitarian ways of ensuring that everyone has enough. Suppose, for example,
that a government can fund its welfare state through two different tax systems: one system
secures adequate revenue through imposing the same at tax rate on each citizen who has
enough; the other imposes a progressive tax rate that takes a larger proportion of citizens
resources as they become wealthier. The reply insists that the latter system is preferable,
even if both are equally likely to ensure that everyone has enough. Such a conviction
is powerful counter-evidence to the sufcientarian critique. In contrast, it ts well both
with the egalitarian impulse to reduce the gap between the more and the less wealthy, and
the priority views key assumption that reasons to benet individuals diminish as they
become more advantaged. As this reply suggests, equality, priority, and sufciency may
be friends rather than foes.
KEY POINTS
There are pluralist and conditional egalitarian replies to the objection that comparative
egalitarian principles favour levelling down.
Prioritarians claimthat the moral value of beneting an individual diminishes as individuals
enjoy more benets.
Sufcientarian anti-egalitarians argue that, when everyone has enough, inequality is unob-
jectionable. Egalitarians can reply that more egalitarian ways of eliminating insufciency
are preferable to less egalitarian ones.
Equality and interpersonal
comparison
Any conceptionof equality requires some standardof interpersonal comparisontoidentify
an individuals level of advantage in different distributions. Much of the debate about
interpersonal comparison turns on what role judgements about an individuals resources
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KEY CONCEPTS 7.2
The currency of distributive justice
The currency of distributive justice is a phrase coined by G. A. Cohen to refer to the standard
of interpersonal comparison that is employed to identify each individuals level of advantage
and thereby decide on how individuals fare relative to one another in different outcomes, or
under different institutions. Contemporary egalitarians have debated whether interpersonal
comparisons should focus on welfare, primary goods, resources, or some combination
of these, or other, benets. Although most favour focusing on individuals opportunities
to enjoy the relevant types of benets, more disagreement exists about the extent to
which individuals can forfeit their entitlements through voluntary choices. One extremely
permissive view, associated with luck egalitarian currencies, assumes that individuals have
extensive choice-making powers and that avoidable inequalities are not unjust.
(Dworkin, 1981a; 2000, p. 65), welfare (Arneson, 1989), and capabilities (Sen, 1992; Nuss-
baum, 2000), or all three considerations (Cohen, 1989) should play in such comparisons.
To sample the debate, begin with the most simple resource-based standard, which
makes comparisons purely on the basis of each individuals level of income and wealth.
Consensus exists that this proposal is too crude and that there can be morally relevant
differences between individuals in other dimensions. For example, all else being equal,
one individual is worse off than another in a morally relevant sense if he or she suffers
from a severe disability, such as blindness or paraplegia. There are, however, various ways
in which to attempt to accommodate this conviction.
Some attempt to do so by arguing that comparisons should focus in addition, or even
exclusively, on personal welfare, or well-being, understood as what makes a persons
life worth living for the individual concerned (Part, 1984, Appendix I). One inuential
account of welfare is preference-based and assumes that how well an individuals life
goes depends upon the extent to which his or her self-regarding preferences are satised.
A preference-based welfare egalitarian might, then, attempt to justify redistribution to
the disabled by appealing to the assumption that disabled individuals are likely to be
less satised with their lives than are others. But those who oppose welfare standards
might question whether being disabled necessarily reduces the level of welfare available
to an individual or deny that an individuals claim not to be disadvantaged by disability
depends upon the truth of such an assumption. Surely Dickenss Tiny Tim, they might
See chapter 8
insist, is entitled to a wheelchair, even if his quality of life is higher than that of many of
the individuals who are required to fund its provision?
Opponents of preference-based welfare standards can also press a more general
objection, designed to show that subjective satisfaction should play no role whatsoever in
interpersonal comparison. The objection takes the form of a dilemma, which Dworkin
illustrates with the following two scenarios (1981a, Pt VIII)
1. In this scenario, we suppose that satisfaction is initially distributed equally, wealth
is also distributed equally, and preferences are equally expensive to satisfy. An in-
dividual, called Louis, then deliberately acquires some new and relatively expensive
161 Equality
....................................................................................................
preferences, and can attain the same level of satisfaction as others only if he receives
more wealth than them.
2. In this scenario, we suppose that satisfaction is initially distributed equally, al-
though an individual called Jude has less wealth than others, but correspondingly
inexpensive preferences. Jude then deliberately acquires preferences that are more
expensive than his previous ones, but no more expensive than others preferences.
As a result, Jude can attain the same level of satisfaction as others only if he receives
as much wealth as them.
The dilemma arises because welfare egalitarians must respond to the rst scenario by
either accepting or denying that Louis is entitled to more wealth than others with
more modest ambitions. If welfare egalitarians take the former option, they then face
the rst horn of the dilemma, because Dworkin then insistsand many egalitarians
agreethat Louis is surely not entitled to more wealth than others. Welfare egalitarians
might take the latter option of denying that Louis is entitled to more wealth than others
and justify doing so by appealing to the fact that Louis might have avoided acquiring
more expensive preferences. If welfare egalitarians make this response, which invokes the
principle of equality of opportunity for welfare, then they face the second horn of the
dilemma (Arneson, 1989), because Dworkin then points out that, in his second scenario,
Jude might also have avoided deliberately acquiring more expensive preferences than he
previously possessed and so, like Louis, enjoys the same opportunity for welfare as others.
Welfare egalitarians should, he suggests, treat the scenarios similarly. Thus, if equality of
opportunity for welfare justies denying that Louis is entitled to more wealth than others,
then it also justies denying Jude as much wealth as others.
Some egalitarians endorse such a denial. For example, in his paper On the currency of
distributive justice (1989), Cohen rejects equality of opportunity for welfare, but afrms
equality of access to advantage, and so affords some role in interpersonal comparison to
an individuals opportunity for welfare as well as his or her resources and capabilities.
Cohens hybrid view implies that, if other things are equal, then Jude should receive
fewer resources, because of his alleged good fortune in having relatively inexpensive
tastes.
In sharp contrast, Dworkin insists that any such denial of Judes claim to equal
resources is implausible and remains unmoved by Cohens later arguments (Cohen,
2004; Dworkin, 2004, pp. 33949). In Dworkins account, then, pandering to people with
expensive tastes by giving them more resources than others and penalizing people with
inexpensive tastes are both objectionable. So, having refused either to side with Louis or
against Jude, Dworkin instead recommends refusing to allow interpersonal comparisons
of preference satisfaction any role in dening an equal distribution.
How might egalitarians avoid the implausibility of a crude resource-based standard
and the various problems associated with welfare-based standards? One response is to
embrace the capability approach to interpersonal comparison that is recommended by
Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. According to this approach, an individuals level
of advantage depends on his or her capacity to function or to act in certain listed ways:
for example, to be well nourished, mobile, and literate. Assuming blindness or paraplegia
impact upon the morally relevant capabilities, the view can easily explain why individuals
with such disabilities are worse off than others, even if they possess the same income and
....................................................................................................
KEY THINKERS 7.2
G. A. Cohen (1941)
A leading contributor to many important debates in political philosophy, Cohen rst became
well known through Karl Marxs Theory of History: A Defence (1978), the founding text in
the development of analytical Marxism. He later made major interventions in debates on
libertarianism and the currency of justice. Most recently, through If Youre an Egalitarian,
How Come Youre So Rich? (2000) and his forthcoming Rescuing Justice and Equality, Cohen
has focused on the role of individual conduct in achieving social justice and has provided the
leading leftist critique of liberal egalitarian political philosophy.
wealth. If the view excludes preference satisfaction from the list of capabilities, it can also
avoid pandering to, or penalizing, people on the basis of their tastes.
Considered as a framework for developing some standard of interpersonal comparison,
the capability approach ts well with familiar judgements of the relevance of individuals
needs todistributive decisionmaking. The most obvious challenge facing its advocates is to
develop a specic version of the approach that focuses on specic capabilities and explains
their relative importance in determining an individuals overall level of advantage. It is
debatable, however, whether such a challenge can be met without reliance on divisive per-
fectionist assumptions about different capabilities contribution to personal well-being. It
is also debatable whether the capability view is superior to a sophisticated resource-based
standard such as Dworkins, which justies redressing inequalities in capability when
doing so mimics the operation of a fair insurance market (Dworkin, 2000, ch. 8).
KEY POINTS
Egalitarians disagree about the role of resources, welfare, and capabilities within interper-
sonal comparison.
Critics claim welfare standards pander to expensive tastes, penalize inexpensive tastes, or
rely on divisive perfectionist ideals.
The claim that capabilities are relevant within interpersonal comparison has considerable
appeal, but disagreement exists about how to identify the relevant capabilities.
Equality, opportunity,
and responsibility
The problem of egalitarian interpersonal comparison is multifaceted. When comparing
each individuals level of advantage, egalitarians have to ask more than whether they
should focus on resources, welfare, capability, or some other type of benet. They also
163 Equality
....................................................................................................
have to ask what range of choices about the relevant benets egalitarian institutions
should empower individuals to make and how to distribute responsibility for those
choices between the decision maker and other individuals.
Suppose that egalitarians accept Dworkins recommendationto focus onresources and,
when distributing goods among a group of similarly talented individuals who differ only
in their preferences, treat everyone as entitled to an equally valuable share of resources.
In addition, they need to decide whether those individuals are entitled to make different
decisions about the productive use of their resources and about their use in other types
of gamble. They also need to decide how the costs and benets of any such decisions
should be distributed. For example, in a desert island scenario, egalitarians have to decide
whether individuals are entitled to work on their land more or less intensively, or to
assume higher or lower risks with their assets. They must, moreover, decide how much
more of their larger product industrious individuals who work more productively than
other similarly talented individuals are entitled to retain and how much, if any, should be
shared with others.
There is a spectrum of opinion about how egalitarians should answer these questions
about the relationship between liberty, liability, and equality. Some views of the rela-
tionship place relatively few limits on how individuals are entitled to use their assets,
provided they do not threaten others fair shares. They also place few limits on the costs
that individuals may be left to bear as a result of making choices that are rightfully theirs.
According to these relatively permissive views, whether one individual is worse off than
another in a morally relevant respect depends, to a large degree, upon the history of the
different individuals actual holdings. Thus, even extreme inequalities in outcome might
be defensible if they were to arise from individuals exercising their rights differently,
but against a background of similar opportunities. Other more restrictive views place
narrower limits on how individuals are entitled to use their assets and what costs they are
liable to bear for their choices. Thus, they might deny individuals the right to squander all
of their assets or to engage in various high-stakes gambles. To limit the costs that decision
makers incur, they might limit the options available to individuals or insist that everyone
shares the costs of others choices, rather than only those of their own misfortunes.
For illustration, consider how such views bear on public policy relating to funding for
smoking-related illnesses. Setting aside the complications that arise because of smokings
addictive character and assuming that every smoker faces the same probability of illness,
more permissive egalitarians are likely to recommend allowing individuals to smoke
without privately insuring against any additional medical costs they thereby incur. They
are also likely to favour requiring those individuals to nance their own medical care if
their smoking leads to illness and might even consider denying such care, rather than
forcing those who choose not to smoke to share in its nancing. In contrast, more
restrictive egalitarians may instead compel smokers to take out additional insurance, by
taxing cigarettes to cover their additional medical expenses, or even force others to share
the costs of smokers choices, by nancing those expenses out of general taxation.
Although Rawls has made some remarks about voluntary unemployment, it is Dwor-
kins work that has provided most of the impetus for recent discussion of the relationship
betweenequality, liberty, and liability (Rawls, 2001, p. 179). As mentioned earlier, equality
of resources permits inequalities in outcome that arise because of differences in indi-
viduals choices against a fair background and reect variations in their attitudes to risk.
....................................................................................................
Many welcome Dworkins lead and have devised rival ambition-sensitive conceptions of
equality (Arneson, 1989; Rakowski, 1993; Roemer, 1995; 1998; Van Parijs, 1996).
Cohen, for example, claims that Dworkin has performed for egalitarianism the con-
siderable service of incorporating within it the most powerful idea in the arsenal of the
anti-egalitarian right: the idea of choice and responsibility (1989, p. 933). Cohens own
conception of equality of access to advantage treats inequalities in outcome very dif-
ferently, depending on whether they originate in variations in choice against an equal
background rather than luck, or are, in that sense, avoidable rather than unavoidable.
Thus, explaining how egalitarianism does not enjoin redress of our compensation for
disadvantage as such, Cohen writes that it:
attends, rather, to involuntary disadvantage, which is the sort that does not re-
ect the subjects choice. Peoples advantages are unjustly unequal . . . when the
inequality . . . reects unequal access to advantage, as opposed to patterns of choice
against a background of equality of access.
(1989, p. 920)
On the other hand, Cohen adds that:
[when] deciding whether or not justice (as opposed to charity) requires redistribution,
the egalitarian asks if someone with a disadvantage could have avoided it or could now
overcome it. If he could have avoided it, he has no claim to compensation, from an
egalitarian point of view.
(p. 920, cf. pp. 916, 931)
Unlike Cohen, however, others have resisted the implausible assumptions about choice
and responsibility that they claim to detect in some of the most inuential recent versions
of egalitarianism.
Elizabeth Anderson (1999, p. 295) coins the label luck egalitarianism to refer to the
fundamentally awed conception of justice that she alleges is present in the work of
Arneson, Cohen, Dworkin, Rakowski, Roemer, and Van Parijs. According to Anderson,
luck egalitarianism is awed, because it combines too critical an attitude to involuntary
disadvantages with too uncritical an attitude to voluntary disadvantages. Pursuing the
rst type of objection, she argues that many attempts to mitigate inequalities in fortune
would be counterproductive, or would jeopardize individuals status and privacy. For
example, trying to redress the unequal effects of the natural lottery on individuals by
redistributing resources will stigmatize the recipients, or will require public ofcials to
pass judgement on the relative worth of individuals natural endowments and make
intrusive enquiries into the degree to which their circumstances are avoidable. Pursuing
the second type of objection, Anderson appeals to an associational ideal of democratic
citizenship, the maintenance of which requires that individuals enjoy access to adequate
levels of certaincapabilities. She objects toluck egalitarianismby alleging that it mistakenly
places no limits on inequalities in such capabilities, provided they have the appropriate
voluntary origins. In Andersons view, however, law-abiding individuals are not entitled
to relinquish such capabilities, although they are entitled not to exercise them.
The success of Andersons critique remains the subject of considerable debate. It is
dubious, for example, whether Andersons objections apply to all of the theorists she
groups together as luck egalitarians or to all attempts to mitigate misfortune (Dworkin,
165 Equality
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2002, Pt IV). It is also possible that luck egalitarians might accommodate her conviction
that some inequalities involving certain forms of absolute deprivation cannot be rendered
only by appeals to their voluntary origins. To do so, they might eschew the assumption
that any inequality can be rendered just if it might be avoided and instead limit the range
of choices that egalitarian institutions should empower individuals to make (Bou-Habib,
2006). Finally, they might also insist that Andersons positive proposal to maintain a
safety net through which even the imprudent are never forced to fall (1999, p. 325) is prey
to many of the objections to anti-egalitarian sufciency principles canvassed earlier.
KEY POINTS
Any conception of equality needs to include an account of liberty and liability.
Most egalitarians reject equality of outcome as the best understanding of the egalitarian
aim. Some claim that inequalities in advantage are unjust if, and only if, they are
unavoidable or involuntary, or due to luck rather than choice.
Opponents of this luck egalitarian claim argue that it is too critical of certain unavoidable
inequalities and too uncritical of certain avoidable inequalities.
Conclusion
The last thirty years have seen substantial progress in understanding the options that
are available to those who believe that equality plays an important role in understanding
social justice. This chapter outlined a number of those options, although inevitably many
issues remained unexplored: in particular, questions about how to understand equalitys
role within the family, its relevance across states and generations, and its relevance to our
treatment of non-human animals. At the same time that theorists made progress, inequal-
ity has grown at alarming rates in, and across, many societies. Such growth is not a fact of
nature, but is, to some degree, under human control. Assessing inequality and attempting
to nd a unied answer to the questions we have addressed remains a morally urgent task.
BOX 7.2
Global inequality
In 1960 the 20% of the worlds people who live in the richest countries had 30 times the
income of the poorest 20%by 1995 they had 82 times as much income.
(United Nations Development Programme, 1998, p. 29)
A child born in the industrial world adds more to pollution and consumption over his or her
lifetime that do 3050 children born in developing countries.
(United Nations Development Programme, 1998, p. 4)
....................................................................................................
The richest 20% of the worlds people in the highest-income countries account for 86%
of total private consumption expendituresthe poorest 20% a minuscule 1.3%. More
specically, the richest fth consume 45% of all meat and sh, 65% of electricity, 58% of
total energy, 74% of all telephone lines, 84% of all paper, and 87% of the worlds vehicle
eet. In each of these areas the share of the bottom fth, in the lowest income countries, is
less than 10%.
(United Nations Development Programme, 1998, pp. 2, 50)
The time somebody needs to work to buy 1 kg of bread or rice or a hamburger in most cities
in the United States is about 20 minutes. In poorer countries it can take up to 18 times
more. It takes 2 hours for the bread, 3 for the burger, in Moscow; 3 for each in Shanghai, 1
and 4 respectively in Caracas and 2 and 6 hours, respectively in Nairobi.
(Sutcliffe, 2002, p. 9)
The income shortfall that separates the 2,801 million people who live below the World
Banks $2 poverty line equals only 1% of global income, or the US annual defense budget,
or half the market value of current annual crude oil production.
(Pogge, 2002, p. 205)
The additional cost of securing the universal provision of basic education is 6 billion U.S.
dollars; i.e. 2 billion dollars less that the amount spent annually on cosmetics in the U.S.
Providing water and sanitation for all costs 9 billion dollars, which is again 2 billion dollars
less than Europeans spend annually on ice-cream. Providing reproductive health for all
women costs 12 billion dollars which equals consumption of perfume in the US and Europe.
Providing healthcare and nutrition for all costs 13 billion dollars, which is 4 billion dollars
less than what is spent on pet food in the US and Europe. Satisfying all the abovementioned
global needs together will cost 40 billion dollars, which is less than what is spent on cigarettes
or alcohol in Europe (50 and 105 billion dollars, respectively) and, of course, weapons in the
world (780 billion dollars). 40 billion dollars is also just 4% of the combined wealth of the
225 riches people in the world1 trillion dollarswhich equals the annual income of the
poorest 47% of the worlds people (2.5 billion dollars).
(United Nations Development Programme, 1998, pp. 37, 30)
Women are half the worlds population, yet they do two thirds of the worlds work, earn
one-tenth of the worlds income, and own less than one-hundredth of the worlds property.
(United Nations, 1985)
CASE STUDY
Pricing parenthood
There is considerable consensus in Western democracies that only very exceptional circum-
stances can justify limiting individuals legal rights to choose whether or not to reproduce
and to determine the size of their families. Many even regard such legal rights as embodying
human rights and endorse Art. 16(1) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
according to which Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality
or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.
See chapter 9
167 Equality
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It would be mistaken, however, to assume that such rights are compelling because
reproductive decisions are inconsequential, or affect only parents and the children they
create. For many individuals, there will be few decisions with as momentous an effect on
their well-being, personal relationships, career prospects, and lifetime earnings as the decision
whether or not to start a family. Moreover, the cumulative impact of such decisions will
extend well beyond the family and, depending on circumstances, may do so in more or
less welcome ways. For example, a low fertility rate may reduce pressure on scarce natural
resources and make it easier for a society to achieve sustainable solutions to long-term
environmental problems. On the other hand, it may also produce an aging population that is
beset by labour shortages, a shrinking tax base, and an increasing need for medical care.
It would also be mistaken to assume that political decisions have little impact on how
the costs and benets of parents reproductive choices are spread between themselves and
others. Instead, their distribution depends very much on the background of institutions and
policies against which those choices are made. For example, the price of parenthood will vary
considerably depending on the extent to which the state supplements parental income with
a system of child benets or tax allowances, provides in-kind benets in the form of freely
available childcare, education, and medical assistance, and funds these measures through
general taxation on all workers or consumers. The career prospects of men and women will
also vary, depending on the extent to which workplace organization leaves at a competitive
disadvantage those parents with extensive domestic responsibilities.
Despite widespread opposition to legally enforced restrictions on reproductive choice,
there is less agreement about how to answer the questions of distributive justice that are
raised by reproduction. This section examines how some of the positions mentioned so far
bear on some of those questions.
As a preliminary, it is worth drawing some distinctions about the various interests at stake
and how they might complement or conict with one another. The most obvious comparison
is between the interests of individuals considered as children and as adults. Both sets of
interests favour providing children with a fair start in life that enables them to contribute to
their society on a just basis. They are also likely to support public funding for the institutions
necessary to develop individuals productive capacities and sense of justice. Conicts are
more likely to arise between the interests of parents and non-parents, and of mothers and
fathers, and the former may well intensify in societies in which fewer people opt to become
parents. Assuming that institutions will have different distributive implications, how might
arguments from egalitarian political theory guide the choice between the interests of parents
and non-parents, or those with larger and smaller families?
One starting point is to consider the implications of equality of resources in a simple
case, within which the theorys other demands are satised and all reproductive decisions
are voluntary. Even in this simplied scenario, it seems plausible to suppose that those
implications will vary depending on whether society has reached the point at which the
production of additional members, on balance, has positive or negative effects on the per
capita stock of resources. So, when the effects are positive, egalitarians need to ask whether
parents have any special claim to reap the benets generated by their reproductive choices.
3
Conversely, when the effects are negative, they need to ask whether parents are especially
liable to bear the costs.
Addressing the latter question, some argue that equality of resources implies that, ideally,
any overall costs generated by the choice to reproduce should be borne by the decision makers,
....................................................................................................
assuming that they already possess a fair share of resources (Casal and Williams, 2004). In a
trenchant endorsement of parental liability over shared liability, Rakowski writes that:
Babies are not brought by storks whose whims are beyond our control. Specic individuals
are responsible for their existence. It is therefore unjust to declare . . . that because two
people decide to have a child, or through carelessness nd themselves with one, everyone is
required to share their resources with the new arrival, and to the same extent as its parents.
(1993, p. 153)
Similarly, according to Peter Vallentyne, it seems clear that agents have a duty to cover
the . . . costs of their procreative activities (2002, p. 207).
Anderson (1999, pp. 297, 3235), however, rejects Rakowskis resourcist conclusion and
treats it as further evidence of luck egalitarianisms implausibility. In part, her rejection is
animated by a concern to protect dependent caretakers, who are usually women, and children
from certain forms of absolute deprivation. Resource egalitarians can address this worry by
incorporating a principle of sufciency within their view and limiting parental liability by
means of a guaranteed safety net. They can also emphasize that their position treats parents
choices as a matter of brute luck for their offspring and so opposes shifting liability from
parent to child. There are, however, other more fundamental criticisms that are less easy to
accommodate.
According to the capability view, institutions and policies should not be assessed by asking
whether they produce outcomes that could have emerged from the type of market process
favoured by equality of resources. Instead, assessment should focus on a list of specic capabil-
ities and ask howthey are distributed between different individuals. The concrete implications
of the view will vary greatly, depending on how that list is speciedbut if it includes pro-
creative and parental capabilities, then the capability view will favour adjusting the price that
individuals have to pay to become parents to ensure that the relevant capabilities are available
and fairly distributed. Thus, when resource egalitarians insist on parents responsibility to
bear any costs that arise from their choosing to reproduce, advocates of a family-friendly
capability view might reply that it is non-parents responsibility if they choose not to take
advantage of the procreative capabilities that society rightly makes available to them.
Which view, if either, is more plausible? As mentioned, the capability view enables
egalitarians to express a concern for human needs that many nd intuitively compelling.
Nevertheless, any view faces objections when it classies certain activities as needs, while
classifying others as the objects of mere preference. For example, suppose that the claim
that parenthood is a need rests on the substantive assumption that many individuals would
lead far less worthwhile lives if incapable of becoming parents. One obvious response is
to question whether the substantive assumption is sound and to claim instead that those
individuals might have led no worse lives without becoming parents. Even if the assumption
is sound, however, critics could challenge the assumptions political relevance by claiming
that it is too divisive to form part of a liberal political conception of justice. They could
also point out that, even if living well does depend on the capability to become a parent,
it is far less plausible to claim that it depends on being able to have as many children as
one might desire. Thus, a perfectionist defence of the family-friendly capability view at most
justies limiting parental liabilityperhaps by granting an exemption in the case of the rst
or second childrather than denying it altogether.
Welfare egalitarians seem just as unlikely as resource egalitarians to accept that parent-
hoods welfare-promoting effects justify spreading its costs across society. If the effects of
169 Equality
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parenthood are so positive, nancing transfers to parents at the expense of non-parents is
just as likely to increase inequalities in well-being as to diminish them. Suppose, then, that its
advocates attempt to defend the family-friendly capability view by relying on less substantive
judgements about individuals interests.
One such defence begins with the observation that people are often moved by moral or
religious convictions to become parents or to nurture their offspring, and then argues that
equality requires adjusting individuals entitlements to take into account either their moral
obligations or their beliefs about such obligations (Anderson, 1999, pp. 3245). Various
conceptions of freedom of religion and conscience imply that it is more difcult to justify
placing on burdens on religious and conscientious activity than placing comparable burdens
on other types of activities, and so might support such adjustments (Nussbaum, 2000, ch.
3). For example, some claim that religious observers are entitled to special exemptions from
generally applicable norms; the observant should be allowed greater exibility in their working
hours or permitted to slaughter animals in ways that would normally contravene anti-cruelty
legislation (Shiffrin, 2004, pp. 2767; Casal, 2003). A family-friendly capability view might
extend this type of claim to working parents and conclude that they too should be treated
differently, with the costs borne by others who lack their responsibilities.
The appeal to conscience raises deep, but unresolved, issues in liberal egalitarianism.
For illustration of one of the challenges that it faces, reconsider the case of Louis, whose
preferences are more expensive to satisfy to than are those of others, but who resource
egalitarians refuse to grant a larger share of resources. If the appeal to conscience is sound,
whether such refusal is justied should depend on the grounds for Louis preferences. For
many, however, it makes no difference whether Louis wishes to undertake some lengthy
journey because he feels bound to go on a pilgrimage, rather than drawn by a sense of
personal adventure. If this reaction is defensible, then there is reason to doubt whether the
appeal to conscience justies the family-friendly capability view.
To conclude this brief survey, consider how one might appeal to autonomy, rather
than to conscience, to reject the resource egalitarian requirement to internalize the costs
of reproductive choice. The argument assumes that social institutions should ensure that
parents provide continuous care for their offspring, but also notes that institutions can do
so in ways that are more or less restrictive of parents autonomy, or opportunities to pursue
a plurality of valuable goals (Alstott, 2004a; 2004b; Raz, 1986, ch. 14). Thus, in order to
satisfy their duties of care under some institutions, many parentsespecially motherswill
often need to forgo employment opportunities, consequently suffering serious long-term
disadvantage. Alternative institutions are feasible, however, that preserve a far wider array
of opportunities and so protect parents autonomy to a greater degree. As Alstott herself
proposes, such institutions might involve resource transfers to caretakers that enable them
to save for their old age and to purchase childcare or education, thereby protecting their
employment opportunities. The appeal to autonomy assumes that care for children should
be secured in ways that preserve, rather than jeopardize, parental autonomy and so favours
the second type of institution.
Even if it is more plausible to appeal to autonomy than conscience, the argument just
sketched is not immune to objections. Resource egalitarians might, for example, object that
it is very unclear when restrictions on parents opportunities become so serious that they
constitute a threat to their autonomy. They might also ask whether the alleged threats to
parental autonomy arise only because the demands of equality of resources are not satised,
particularly for women. Far more work needs to be done on these issues, as well as on
....................................................................................................
many of the other distributive questions generated by procreation that we have not had time
to survey. Most importantly, even if justice does require parents to bear the costs of their
decisions, it might still remain a serious injustice if, as remains the case in most societies,
the price of motherhood greatly exceeds the price of fatherhood.
QUESTIONS
1. Are class-based inequalities in career prospects and political power really unjust?
2. Are social and natural luck comparable as sources of unfairness?
3. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Rawls intuitive argument for democratic
equality?
4. What role, if any, should insurance markets play in a plausible conception of equality?
5. What is wrong with levelling down?
6. Is there any reason to care about inequality if everyone has enough?
7. To what extent, if at all, should egalitarian principles of justice aim to ensure equality in
preference satisfaction?
8. Is the capability approach preferable to equality of resources?
9. Are only unavoidable inequalities unjust?
10. To what extent does a concern with equality favour sharing the costs of parents repro-
ductive choices?
FURTHER READING
Barry, B. (2005) Why Social Justice Matters, Cambridge: Polity Press. One of the worlds leading
political theorists provides a trenchant critique of the recent growth of inequality and an important
discussion of how preserving equality of opportunity depends on limiting inequality in outcome.
Casal, P. (2007) Why sufciency is not enough, Ethics, 117(2), pp. 296326. A systematic
critique of anti-egalitarian appeals to principles of sufciency, combined with positive proposals
about the role that such principles can play in complementing principles of equality and priority.
Clayton, M. and Williams, A. (eds) (2000) The Ideal of Equality, London: Macmillan. A useful
collection of classic papers, including Parts Lindley Lecture, Equality or priority?, as well as
contributions by Arneson, G. A. Cohen, Dworkin, Nagel, Rawls, Scanlon, and Temkin.
Cohen, G. A. (1997) Where the action is. on the site of distributive justice, Philosophy
and Public Affairs, 26(1), pp. 330. Summarizes Cohens widely discussed critique of using the
difference principle to defend incentives and argues for the application of principles of social
justice to individual conduct.
Cohen, G. A. (1989) On the currency of egalitarian justice, Ethics, 99(4), pp. 90644. An
article that greatly inuenced later debates about justice and interpersonal comparison, and the
role of choice and responsibility, within egalitarian theories.
171 Equality
....................................................................................................
Dworkin, R. (2000) Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality, Cambridge, MA;
Harvard University Press. Perhaps the second most important statement of liberal egalitarianism.
Okin, S. M. (1989) Justice, Gender and the Family, New York: Basic Books. An inuential and
accessible critique of the role of the traditional family in maintaining gender-based inequality
and one of the best statements of feminist political theory.
Rawls, J. (1978) A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. The most important
statement of liberal egalitarianism.
Temkin, L. (1993) Inequality, Oxford: Clarendon Press. The most detailed and systematic
treatment of various views of how one outcome can be worse than other in relation to inequality.
Van Parijs, P. (1996) Real Freedom for All, Oxford: Clarendon Press. A brilliant appeal to
resource egalitarian principles to defend radical social reform, via the provision of a universal
basic income that is unconditional on willingness to seek paid employment.
WEB LINKS
hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/ The Human Development Report 2006 compares gures
from 177 countries on various aspects of human development, such as literacy or life expectancy,
and compares various countries success in converting their wealth into human development.
mora.rente.nhh.no/projects/EqualityExchange Awide range of forthcoming papers onequal-
ity within various disciplines, as well as information on conferences and fellowships relevant to
the study of equality.
www.demos.org/inequality Inequality.org contains a wealth of recent information about
inequality, as well as statistics and quotations.
www.jrf.org.uk The JosephRowntree Foundationprovides links to a host of useful information
about poverty and inequality in the UK.
www1.worldbank.org/prem/poverty/inequal/index.htm The World Bank Groups PovertyNet
contains information on inequality, its measurement, and its effects on poverty, crime, health,
and gender relations.
ENDNOTES
1
The authors are grateful to Catriona McKinnon for very helpful comments.
2
See Persson (2001) for a plausible argument that prioritarians can escape the levelling
down objection even if their view takes a comparative form that attaches importance to an
individuals relative, as well as absolute, levels of advantage.
3
Space precludes further discussion here, but see Casal (1999) and Casal and Williams (2004,
Pt IV).
Visit the Online Resource Centre that accompanies this book to access more learning
resources: www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/orc/mckinnon/

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