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Symposium on Equality versus Priority
This symposium publishes for the first time three key contributions to the debate on the nature and importance of the distinction between egalitarianism (the view that it is in itself bad, when and because it is unfair, for some to be worse off than others) and prioritarianism (the view that each person's welfare has diminishing marginal moral value and that the moral value of a person's welfare depends only on that person's level of welfare, and not on how anyone else fares). These papers were commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2000. They were intended for publication in a WHO volume which has not yet materialized, and this has hindered access to these important papers. Permission was therefore secured from the WHO to publish them here.1
Marc Fleurbaey's paper questions the practical significance of the distinction between egalitarianism and prioritarianism. He argues that the prioritarian's ranking of two distributions of welfare outcomes can always be represented by a pluralist egalitarian ranking, which cares about both average welfare...