An Economics-Based Rationale for the Rawlsian Social Welfare Program

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.

Citation

Stark, O. (2020), "An Economics-Based Rationale for the Rawlsian Social Welfare Program", Rodríguez, J.G. and Bishop, J.A. (Ed.) Inequality, Redistribution and Mobility (Research on Economic Inequality, Vol. 28), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 179-186. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1049-258520200000028007