Critical-Level Sufficientarianism

38 Pages Posted: 12 Jun 2020

See all articles by Walter Bossert

Walter Bossert

University of Montreal Department of Economics

Susumu Cato

University of Tokyo

Kohei Kamaga

Faculty of Economics, Sophia University

Date Written: May 18, 2020

Abstract

This paper provides an axiological foundation of a class of sufficientarian principles that are based on the individual transformed well-being gains and losses from a threshold level. The ideas underlying these principles have their origins in the literature on population ethics. We characterize this class by showing that its members are the only principles that possess some intuitively appealing properties. One of these conditions explicitly expresses the absolute priority to be given to those below the threshold, a property that is shared by numerous earlier sufficientarian approaches. In addition, we examine well-established conditions that prescribe the consequences of progressive transfers and identify the subclass of our principles that satisfy the requisite requirements.

Keywords: sufficientarianism; critical-level utilitarianism; social choice; distributive justice; population ethics

JEL Classification: D31; D63

Suggested Citation

Bossert, Walter and Cato, Susumu and Kamaga, Kohei, Critical-Level Sufficientarianism (May 18, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3604325 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3604325

Walter Bossert

University of Montreal Department of Economics ( email )

PO Box 6128, Station Downtown
Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7
Canada

Susumu Cato (Contact Author)

University of Tokyo ( email )

7-3-1 Hongo
Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo, Tokyo 133-033
Japan

Kohei Kamaga

Faculty of Economics, Sophia University ( email )

7-1, Kioi-cho
Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo, 1028554
Japan

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
55
Abstract Views
405
Rank
670,186
PlumX Metrics