Welfare inequalities and Rawlsian axiomatics

This paper is concerned with ordinal comparisons of welfare inequality and its use in social welfare judgements, especially in the context of Rawls' difference principle. In Section 1 the concept of ordinal inequality comparisons is developed and a theorem on ordinal comparisons of welfare inequality for distributional problems is noted. Section 2 is devoted to Harsanyi's (1955) argument that a concern for reducing welfare inequalities among persons must not enter social welfare judgements. In Section 3 an axiomatic derivation of Rawls' lexicographic maximim rule is presented; this relates closely to results established by Hammond (1975), d'Aspremont and Gevers (1975) and Strasnick (1975). In the last section the axioms used are examined and some alternative axioms are analysed with the aim of a discriminating evaluation of the Rawlsian approach to judgements on social welfare.Based on the text of a lecture delivered at the International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science in London, Ontario, Canada, on August 29th, 1975. Thanks are due to Peter Hammond and Kevin Roberts for helpful comments and criticisms.