An Economics-Based Rationale for the Rawlsian Social Welfare Program

Oded Stark

A chapter in Inequality, Redistribution and Mobility, 2020, vol. 28, pp 179-186 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: We show that a social planner who seeks to allocate a given sum in order to reduce efficiently the social stress of a population, as measured by the aggregate relative deprivation of the population, pursues a disbursement procedure that is identical to the procedure adhered to by a Rawlsian social planner who seeks to allocate the same sum in order to maximize the Rawlsian maximin-based social welfare function. Thus, the constrained minimization of aggregate relative deprivation constitutes an economics-based rationale for the philosophy-based constrained maximization of the Rawlsian social welfare function.

Keywords: Rawlsian social welfare function; Aggregate relative deprivation (ARD); Social stress; An algorithm of cost-effective policy response to ARD; Congruence of the algorithm with the Rawlsian social welfare program; A13; D04; D63; H53; P51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Working Paper: An economics-based rationale for the Rawlsian social welfare program (2020)
Working Paper: An Economics-Based Rationale for the Rawlsian Social Welfare Program (2020)
Working Paper: An economics-based rationale for the Rawlsian social welfare program (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:reinzz:s1049-258520200000028007

DOI: 10.1108/S1049-258520200000028007

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