The Size of Inequality and Its Badness Some reflections around Temkin's Inequality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20142592 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Włodek Rabinowicz (0000-0001-5910-0258, Lund University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 69 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 60-84 |
| Publication date | 2003-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Theoria (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1755-2567.2003.tb00754.x |
| OpenAlex | W2082830360 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
This paper puts forward the following claims: (i) The size of inequality in welfare should be distinguished from its badness. (ii) The size of a pairwise inequality between two individuals can be measured by the absolute or the relative welfare distance between their welfare levels, but it does not depend on the welfare levels of other individuals. (iii) The size of inequality in a social state may be understood either as the degree of pairwise inequality or as its amount. (iv) The badness of a pairwise inequality may differ from its size in several ways; for example, the badness measure might go by the distance between priority‐transformed welfare levels and/or it might assign heavier weight to larger distances. (v) The badness of a pairwise inequality may be either personal or impersonal, with the personal interpretation being internally consistent and, pace Temkin, independently tenable even if we reject the so‐called Slogan (i.e., the Person‐Affecting Claim). (vi) The aggregation procedure by which we arrive from the badness of pairwise inequalities to the badness of the inequality in a social state takes different forms depending on whether the badness of a pairwise inequality is interpreted in a personal or in an impersonal way. (vii) Since Temkin's complaint‐based measures of the badness of inequality follow the format appropriate for the personal interpretation, they seem out of place if one, like him, treats the badness of inequality as an impersonal value
Economics · Inequality · Interpretation (philosophy) · Mathematical analysis · Mathematical economics · Pairwise comparison · Positive economics · Statistics · Value (mathematics) · Welfare · Welfare economics · Economic Theory and Institutions · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Mathematics · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics
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Egalitarianism and the Putative Paradoxes of Population Ethics
Persons, Interests, and Justice
Measuring Social Welfare by Proximity to an Optimum Population
The Levelling-Down Objection and the additive measure of the badness of inequality
Calibration dilemmas in the ethics of distribution
Positive Egalitarianism Reconsidered
Why We Should be Negative about Positive Egalitarianism
A few concerns about bioethics
The Equivalence of Egalitarianism and Prioritarianism
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,56 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2023 (16) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |