An Economics-Based Rationale for the Rawlsian Social Welfare Program

Oded Stark

No 13662, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

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: congruence of the algorithm with the Rawlsian social welfare program; Rawlsian social welfare function; social stress; aggregate relative deprivation (ARD); an algorithm of cost-effective policy response to ARD (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 D04 D63 H53 P51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2020-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published in: Rodríguez, J.G. and Bishop, J.A. (eds), Inequality, Redistribution and Mobility, Bingley, 2020, 179-186

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Related works:
Chapter: 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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