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Measuring justice and development: Providing opportunities or respecting preferences
- 1. Measuring justice and development: Providing opportunities or respecting preferences Marc Fleurbaey
- 2. Outline • Equal opportunities: approaches • Equal opportunities: problems • Another perspective: freedom • Respecting preferences • Issues in implementation
- 3. Equal opportunities: approaches • Pragmatic approach (Roemer, World Bank): average outcome by origin – = disparity measurement, standardization • Genuine opportunities approach (Sen, Cohen, Roemer): capability sets, access to advantage – Key element: genuine choice • Resource approach (Rawls, Dworkin): generic resources, offered for use according to preferences – Criticized for fetishizing resources and preferences
- 4. Equal opportunities: approaches • The reward problem: what should opportunities look like? Flat or steep? – Liberal approach: no intervention by the government, no redistribution when inequalities are due to responsibility – Utilitarian approach: zero inequality aversion, therefore give more to those with greater marginal utility (if they are responsible for it)
- 5. Equal opportunities: problems • Anti-solidarity attitude, moralizing, self- righteous • What is genuine choice? Individuals are influenced in so many ways • Does EOp therefore reduce to equality of outcome? • Yes – but what outcome?
- 6. Another perspective: freedom • The bright side of opportunities: freedom • Should not be fetishized but is important and attractive (across all cultures) • Does not justify focus on opportunities rather than achievement, but is a component of well- being • Concretely? Take account of people’s goals in life, their values, preferences (including on how much choice they want)
- 7. Respecting preferences • Is it possible? Arrow’s theorem suggests not • Interpersonal comparisons are the key ingredient of social evaluation • This is not an empirical issue, but a fairness issue: who deserves greater priority?
- 8. Illustration: equivalent income • Life = (income , quality of life) • Quality of life : denoted QoL • Principle 1: respect preferences on Life • Principle 2 (fairness): When QoL = QoL*, the richer are better off • Theorem: Under these principles, people must be compared in terms of equivalent incomes: (income , QoL) as good as (Eq.Inc. , QoL*)
- 9. Illustration: equivalent income • Measure of social welfare: Average Equivalent Income x ( 1 – Inequality index on Eq.Inc.) • The inequality index embodies priority for the worst-off
- 12. What are people’s preferences ? • Sources of information: – Revealed preferences – Stated preferences – Subjective well-being regressed on objects of preferences • What are “authentic” preferences ? – Social conventions, social pressure – Behavioral phenomena (esp. for intertemporal and risk issues)
- 13. Making it relevant • How to extend the measure to different levels of development? – OECD: unemployment and life expectancy – Other studies: also leisure, family size – What about basic health care, basic public goods, safe water… • Incorporate important social issues that are seldom measured: – Status – Autonomy at work (workers) – And at home (gender) – Freedom of movement and ideas – Quality of social networks
- 14. Conclusion • Opportunities: better than nothing but potentially misleading • Identifying and respecting preferences may be more promising: why do people rebel? • Democratizing measures of social progress: not by cheap participatory forums, but by seeking to cater to people’s values and goals