Equality, Priority, and Distributional Judgements

Abstract

The present essay undertakes an assessment of the substantive significance of Derek Parfit’s distinction between Prioritarianism and Egalitarianism. In providing a brief critique of Parfit’s arguments, the essay draws on the author’s own earlier work and that of Thomas Christiano and Will Braynen, John Broome, and Marc Fleurbaey. It considers issues relating to the ‘Levelling Down Objection’, the ‘Divided World example’, and the distinction between ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ valuations of individual benefit. It is contended that ‘levelling down’ presents a difficulty only for ‘Pure Telic Egalitarianism’, not for ‘Pluralist Telic Egalitarianism’; that one can have an Egalitarian rationalization for favouring equality in the distribution of a smaller sum of well-being over inequality in the distribution of a larger sum even in a ‘Divided World’; and that, while a particular ‘absolute’/‘relative’ dichotomy is relevant for a particular ‘distribution-invariance’/‘distribution-sensitivity’ dichotomy, the resulting distinction is useful for differentiating two types of Egalitarian rather than for differentiating a non-Egalitarian principle such as Prioritarianism from Egalitarianism.

This chapter draws heavily and directly on a previously published paper of the author’s, the content from which is re-used here with the permission of the copyright holder: S. Subramanian (2015): ‘Equality, Priority, and Distributional Judgements’, in S. K. Jain and A. Mukherji (eds.): Perspectives on Growth and Inequality. Routledge: New Delhi. ISBN 9780815373308. I would like to thank, without implicating, John Broome, Thomas Christiano, Sanjay Reddy and Henry Richardson for comments on earlier versions.