Inequality Reexamined (Russell Sage Foundation Books)

222 Pages·1992·23.75 MB·English

by  Amartya Sen

INEQUALITY REEXAMINED
This page intentionally left blank
INEQUALITY
REEXAMINED
AMARTYA SEN
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION • NEW YORK
CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD
This book has been printed digitally a"d produced in a standard specification
in order to ensure its continuing availability
OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal
Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
© Amartya Sen 1992
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
Reprinted 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
op>r as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
And you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
fSBN 0-19-828334-2
To
Indrani and Kabir
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
Introduction; Questions and Themes 1
1. EQUALITY OF WHAT? 12
1.1 Why Equality? What Equality? 12
L2 Impartiality and Equality 16
1.3 Human Diversity and Basal Equality 19
1.4 Equality versus Liberty? 21
1.5 Plurality and Alleged Emptiness 23
1.6 Means and Freedoms 26
/. 7 Income Distribution, Weil-Being and Freedom 28
2. FREEDOM, ACHIEVEMENT AND RESOURCES 31
2.1 Freedom and Choice 31
2.2 Real Income, Opportunities and Selection 34
2.3 Freedom Distinguished from Resources 36
3. FUNCnONINGS AND CAPABILITY 39
3.1 Capability Sets 39
3.2 Value Objects and Evaluative Spaces 42
3J Selection and Weighting 44
3.4 Incompleteness: Fundamental and Pragmatic 46
3.5 Capability or Functionings? 49
3.6 Utility vis-k-v"& Capability 53
4. FREEDOM, AGENCY AND WELL-BEING 56
4.1 Well-Being vis-a-vis Agency 56
4.2 Agency; Instrumentality and Realization 51
4.3 Can Freedom Conflict with Weil-Being? 59
4.4 Freedom and Disadvantageous Choices 62
4.5 Control and Effective Freedom 64
4.6 Freedom from Hunger, Malaria and Other Maladies 66
4.7 The Relevance of Weil-Being 69
5. JUSTICE AND CAPABILITY 73
5, / The Informational Bases of Justice 73
viil Contents
5.2 Rawlsian Justice and the Political Conception 75
5.3 Primary Goods and Capabilities 79
5.4 Diversities: Ends and Personal Characteristics 85
6, WELFARE ECONOMICS AND INEQUALITY 88
6.1 Space Choice and Evaluative Purpose 88
6.2 Shortfalls, Attainments and Potentials 89
6.3 Inequality, Welfare and Justice 93
6.4 Welfare-Based Inequality Evaluation 95
7, POVERTY AND AFFLUENCE 102
7.1 Inequality and Poverty 102
7.2 The Nature of Poverty 107
7.3 Lowness vis-a-vis Inadequacy of Incomes 109
7.4 Do Concepts Matter? 112
7.5 Poverty in Rich Countries 114
8, CLASS, GENDER AND OTHER GROUPS 117
8.1 Class and Classification 117
8.2 Gender and Inequality 122
8.3 Interregional Contrasts 125
9, THE DEMANDS OF EQUALITY 129
9.1 Questions of Equality 129
9.2 Equality, Space and Diversity 130
9.3 Plurality, Incompleteness and Evaluation 131
9.4 Data, Observations and Effective Freedoms 135
9.5 Aggregation, Egalitarianism and Efficiency 136
9.6 Alternative Defences of Inequality 138
9.7 Incentives, Diversity and Egalitarianism 141
9.8 On Equality as a Social Concern 143
9.9 Responsibility and Fairness 148
9JO Capability, Freedom and Motivations 150
References 153
Index of Names 199
Index of Subjects 205
Preface
THIS monograph, as the title indicates, is about re-examining in-
equality. But it is also about the evaluation and assessment of social
arrangements in general. The former depends on the latter.
Equality of What?
The central question in the analysis and assessment of equality is, I
argue here, 'equality of whatT I also argue that a common charac-
teristic of virtually all the approaches to the ethics of social arrange-
ments that have stood the test of time is to want equality of some-
thing—something that has an important place in the particular
theory. Not only do income-egalitarians (if I may call them that)
demand equal incomes, and welfare-egalitarians ask for equal wel-
fare levels, but also classical utilitarians insist on equal weights on
the utilities of all, and pure libertarians demand equality with respect
to an entire class of rights and liberties. They are all 'egalitarians' in
some essential way—arguing resolutely for equality of something
which everyone should have and which is quite crucial to their own
particular approach. To see the battle as one between those 'in favour
of* and those 'against* equality (as the problem is often posed in the
literature) is to miss something central to the subject.
I also argue that this common feature of being egalitarian in some
significant way relates to the need to have equal concern, at some
level, for all the persons involved—the absence of which would
tend to make a proposal lack social plausibility.
Central Equality and Entailed Inequality
The crucial role of the question 'equality of what?* suggests that we
can see the disputes between different schools of thought in terms of
what they respectively take to be the central social exercise in which
equality is to be demanded. These demands would then qualify the
nature of the other social decisions. The demand for equality in
terms of one variable entails that the theory concerned may have to
be non-egalitarian with respect to another variable, since the two
perspectives can, quite possibly, conflict.