IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/sochwe/v16y1999i4p599-614.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The distribution problem and Rawlsian reasoning

Author

Listed:
  • Bertil Tungodden

    (Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Institute of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5035 Bergen-Sandviken, Norway)

Abstract

The difference principle of Rawls has been wrongly translated in the formal literature on welfare economics and social choice theory. The difference principle is concerned with the welfare of the members of the least advantaged segment, and, thus, does not - as frequently argued - assign dictatorial power to the person in the worst off position in society. This distinction is important, and the focus on a leximingroup rule makes the Rawlsian position more plausible than it is in the `disguise' of the conventional leximin rule. However, there is a difficulty with this approach, to wit how to understand the least advantaged segment in society. Various definitions are considered in the paper, but it turns out that in most cases these definitions imply that we have to accept the leximin rule. We suggest one line of reasoning that makes the Rawlsian leximingroup rule a genuine alternative to the leximin rule. In this approach, an independent norm level is imposed on the analysis (i.e. a cut off line that is independent of the distribution of welfare under consideration), and the least advantaged segment is identified as those who have less than this minimum stipend.

Suggested Citation

  • Bertil Tungodden, 1999. "The distribution problem and Rawlsian reasoning," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 16(4), pages 599-614.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:16:y:1999:i:4:p:599-614
    Note: Received: 21 December 1994/Accepted: 15 June 1998
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00355/papers/9016004/90160599.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. d'Aspremont, Claude & Gevers, Louis, 2002. "Social welfare functionals and interpersonal comparability," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 10, pages 459-541, Elsevier.
    2. Dale Dorsey, 2014. "Equality-tempered prioritarianism," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 13(1), pages 45-61, February.
    3. Bertil Tungodden, 2001. "A balanced view of development as freedom," CMI Working Papers WP 2001:14, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:16:y:1999:i:4:p:599-614. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.