Welfare Egalitarianism with Other-Regarding Preferences

Abstract

We study the fair allocation of a one-dimensional and perfectly divisible good when individuals have other-regarding preferences. Assuming no legitimate claims and purely ordinal preferences, how should society measure social welfare so as to satisfy basic principles of efficiency and fairness? We define the egalitarian equivalent as the size of the egalitarian allocation which leaves the individual indifferent to the current allocation. In two simple models of average and positional externalities, we characterize the class of social preferences which give full priority to the individual with the lowest egalitarian equivalent in the economy.

Health and fairness with other-regarding preferences

“…Finally, it is important to stress that other SOFs different than the one proposed here may also satisfy the principles endorsed by our society. So far, the only way to obtain complete characterisation results with ORPs is to focus on models in which agents have relative views on the average consumption alone (see Treibich 2015). The derivation of characterisation results in complex settings like the one depicted in the present paper will be part of a future research.…”

“…Unlike standard self-centered preferences, ORPs consider that individuals care about their own situation as well as others' (e.g., Fleurbaey 2012). In a recent paper, Decerf and Van der Linden (2016) examine how basic fairness and efficiency principles determine the construction of social preferences when agents have heterogeneous ORPs (see also Treibich 2015).…”

Global Income Poverty Measurement with Preference Heterogeneity: Theory and Application

“…All poverty measures satisfy this property in traditional settings, that is, when only own income matters, or when both own income and relative income matters and but their framework features self-centered preferences over multidimensional goods and they weaken the Domination principle. Decerf and van der Linden (2016) and Treibich (2019) consider a framework with other-regarding preferences, but they study social welfare measurement. In particular, Treibich (2019) considers a setting with other-regarding preferences over own income and relative income, but he weakens the Domination principle.…”

Fair Social Ordering, Egalitarianism, and Animal Welfare

“…3 For a study of other-regarding preferences between humans in a similar approach, see Decerf and Van der Linden (2015) and Treibich (2019).…”