by Sen, Amartya
1. The role of informational exclusion and inclusion is discussed in my “On Weights and Measures: Informational Constraints in Social Welfare Analysis,” Econometrica 45 (October 1977), reprinted in Choice, Welfare and Measurement (Oxford: Blackwell; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982; republished, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), and “Informational Analysis of Moral Principles,” in Rational Action, edited by Ross Harrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
2. See Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (London: Payne, 1789; republished, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907).
3. An informational critique of utilitarianism can be found in my “Utilitarianism and Welfarism,” Journal of Philosophy 7 (September 1979), and “Well-Being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984,” Journal of Philosophy 82 (April 1985).
4. On the distinctions, see J.C.B. Gosling, Pleasure and Desire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); John C. Harsanyi, Essays in Ethics, Social Behaviour, and Scientific Explanation (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1977).
5. On the methodological issue involved, see my “On Weights and Measures” (1977) and “Informational Analysis of Moral Principles” (1979).
6. Lionel Robbins was particularly influential in arguing that there could be no scientific basis for the possibility of interpersonal comparison of happiness (“Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility,” Economic Journal 48 [1938]), and his critique had the effect of severely undermining utilitarianism as a mainstream approach in welfare economics.
7. Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789); John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (London, 1861; republished London: Collins/Fontana, 1962); Henry Sidgwick, The Method of Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1874); William Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy (London: Macmillan, 1871; reprinted, 5th edition, 1957); Francis Edgeworth, Mathematical Psychics: An Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Moral Sciences (London: Kegan Paul, 1881); Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (London: Macmillan, 8th edition, 1920); A. C. Pigou, The Economics of Welfare (London: Macmillan, 1920).
8. This is the simplest version of utilitarianism. For some complex and less direct versions, see particularly R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Methods and Point (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); and James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
9. The technical issues involved and some limitations of defining utility in the binary framework of choice are discussed in my Choice, Welfare and Measurement (1982), and more informally in On Ethics and Economics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).
10. See, for example, Independent Commission on Population and Quality of Life, Caring for the Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); see also Mark Sagoff, The Economy of the Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), and Kjell Arne Brekke, Economic Growth and the Environment (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1997), among other works.
11. I have presented my reservations about utilitarianism in, among other places, Collective Choice and Social Welfare (San Francisco: Holden-Day, 1970; republished, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1979); On Economic Inequality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973); Inequality Reexamined (Oxford: Clarendon Press; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). For powerful critiques of the utilitarian tradition, see John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971); Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in Utilitarianism: For and Against, by J.J.C. Smart and B. Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974); Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (London: Duckworth, 1978); Joseph Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994; revised edition, 1995); among other contributions.
12. See Sen, Inequality Reexamined (1992), and Martha Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
13. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971).
14. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974). See, however, Nozick’s later—more qualified—position in The Examined Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989).
15. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971); see also his Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), especially lecture 8.
16. H.L.A. Hart, “Rawls on Liberty and Its Priority,” University of Chicago Law Review 40 (Spring 1973), reprinted in Reading Rawls, edited by Norman Daniels (New York: Basic Books, 1975); and Rawls, Political Liberalism (1993), lecture 8.
17. See my Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), and a joint book with Jean Drèze, Hunger and Public Action (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). See also Jeffrey L. Coles and Peter J. Hammond, “Walrasian Equilibrium without Survival: Existence, Efficiency and Remedial Policy,” in Choice, Welfare and Development: A Festschrift in Honour of Amartya K. Sen, edited by Kaushik Basu, Prasanta Pattanaik and Kotaro Suzumura (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
18. Particular proposals of broadened consequential systems that incorporate rights can be found in my “Rights and Agency,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 11 (1982), reprinted in Consequentialism and Its Critics, edited by Samuel Scheffler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); and “Well-Being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984,” Journal of Philosophy 82 (April 1985). See also my Freedom, Rationality and Social Choice: Arrow Lectures and Other Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, forthcoming).
19. Robbins, “Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility” (1938), p. 636. For critiques of this position (in particular, of the general denial of the scientific status of interpersonal comparisons of utility), see I.M.D. Little, A Critique of Welfare Economics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950; 2d edition, 1957); B.M.S. Van Praag, Individual Welfare Functions and Consumer Behaviour (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1968); Amartya Sen, On Economic Inequality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973; expanded edition, 1997); Amartya Sen, “Interpersonal Comparisons of Welfare,” in Economics and Human Welfare, edited by Michael Boskin (New York: Academic Press, 1980), and reprinted in my Choice, Welfare and Measurement (1982); and the papers of Donald Davidson and Allan Gibbard in Foundations of Social Choice Theory, edited by Jon Elster and A. Hylland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); and Jon Elster and John Roemer, eds., Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-Being (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
20. John Harsanyi extends the choice definition of utility to interpersonal comparisons by considering hypothetical choices, whereby it is imagined that a person does consider becoming someone else (“Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparison of Utility,” Journal of Political Economy 63 [1955], reprinted in his Essays in Ethics, Social Behaviour, and Scientific Explanation [Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976]). Indeed, Harsanyi’s approach to utilitarian welfare economics is based on valuing a social arrangement in terms of having an equal chance of being anyone in the society. This is an extremely useful thought experiment, and it elegantly gives a precise form to a general approach to fairness that has been invoked for a long time in the ethical literature. But such hypothetical choices are not easy to use in practice for actual comparisons of utility, and the main merit of the approach is purely conceptual.
21. The content of the set of possible utility functions corresponding to a given choice behavior would depend on the type of measurability that is presumed (e.g., ordinal, cardinal, ratio-scale). Interpersonal comparison of utilities requires “invariance conditions” being imposed on the combinations of utility functions of different persons from the Cartesian product of their respective sets of possible utility functions. On these matters, see my “Interpersonal Aggregation and Partial Comparability,” Econometrica 38 (1970), reprinted in my Choice, Welfare and Measurement (1982), and Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970). See also K.W.S. Roberts, “Interpersonal Comparisons and Social Choice Theory,” Review of Economic Studies 47 (1980). Such “invariance condition
s” cannot be obtained from observed choice behavior.
22. On this issue, see Franklin M. Fisher and Karl Shell, The Economic Theory of Price Indices (New York: Academic Press, 1972). This issue was also raised in Herb Gintis’s Harvard University Ph.D. thesis, “Alienation and Power: Toward a Radical Welfare Economics” (1969).
23. The basic results in the literature on real-income comparisons are surveyed and scrutinized in my “The Welfare Basis of Real-Income Comparisons: A Survey,” Journal of Economic Literature 17 (1979), reprinted in my Resources, Values and Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984; reprinted 1997).
24. The diversity of influences on personal welfare have been studied in depth in the “Scandinavian studies” on living standards; see, for example, Robert Erikson and R. Aberg, Welfare in Transition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
25. See particularly Glen Loury, “A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences,” in Women, Minorities and Employment Discrimination, edited by P. A. Wallace and A. Lamond (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1977), and “Why Should We Care about Group Inequality?” Social Philosophy and Policy 5 (1987); James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); Robert Putnam, R. Leonardi and R. Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Robert Putnam, “The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life,” American Prospect 13 (1993); and “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracies 6 (1995).
26. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). See also W. G. Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice: A Study of Attitudes to Social Inequality in Twentieth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1966), and Peter Townsend, Poverty in the United Kingdom: A Survey of Household Resources and Standards of Living (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979).
27. On this see my “Gender and Cooperative Conflict,” in Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development, edited by Irene Tinker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), and the literature cited there.
28. Indeed, in some contexts, such as explanation of famines (and policy analysis for famine prevention), the lack of income of potential famine victims (and the possibility of regenerating their incomes) may occupy a central position in the investigation. On this see my Poverty and Famines (1981).
29. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971), pp. 60–5. See also his Political Liberalism (1993).
30. In a related line of argument, Ronald Dworkin has argued for “equality of resources,” broadening the Rawlsian coverage of primary goods to include insurance opportunities to guard against the vagaries of “brute luck” (see his “What Is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare” and “What Is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 [1981]).
31. On this see my “Equality of What?”, in Tanner Lectures on Human Values, volume 1, edited by S. McMurrin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), and “Justice: Means versus Freedoms,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 19 (1990). There is, however, some ambiguity about the exact content of “primary goods” as defined by Rawls. Some primary goods (such as “income and wealth”) are no more than means to real ends (as Aristotle famously noted at the very beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics). Other primary goods (such as “the social basis of self-respect” to which Rawls makes an explicit reference) can include aspects of the social climate, even though they are generalized means (in the case of “the social basis of self-respect” means to achieving self-respect). Still others (such as “liberties”) can be interpreted in different ways: either as means (liberties permit us to do things that we may value doing) or as the actual freedom to achieve certain results (the latter way of seeing liberties has been particularly used in the social choice literature, for example in my Collective Choice and Social Welfare [1970], chapter 6). But the Rawlsian program of using primary goods to judge individual advantage in his “Difference Principle” is mainly motivated by his attempt to characterize general-purpose means, and thus is subject to interpersonal variations in the conversion of means to the freedom to pursue ends.
32. See Alan Williams, “What Is Wealth and Who Creates It?” in Dependency to Enterprise, edited by John Hutton et al. (London: Routledge, 1991); A. J. Culyer and Adam Wagstaff, “Needs, Equality and Social Justice,” Discussion Paper 90, Centre for Health Economics, University of York, 1991; Alan Williams, Being Reasonable about the Economics of Health: Selected Essays by Alan Williams, edited by A. J. Culyer (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1997). See also Paul Farmer, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998); Michael Marmot, Martin Bobak and George Davey Smith, “Explorations for Social Inequalities in Health,” in Society and Health, edited by B. C. Amick, S. Levine, A. R. Tarlov and D. Chapman Walsh (London: Oxford University Press, 1995); Richard G. Wilkinson, Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality (New York: Routledge, 1996); James Smith, “Socioeconomic Status and Health,” American Economic Review 88 (1998), and “Healthy Bodies and Thick Wallets: The Dual Relationship between Health and Socioeconomic Status,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 13 (1999). Much insight can also be obtained from studies of specific health problems; for example, see Paul Farmer, Margaret Connors and Janie Simmons, eds., Women, Poverty and AIDS: Sex, Drugs and Structural Violence (Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, 1996); Alok Bhargava, “Modeling the Effects of Nutritional and Socioeconomic Factors on the Growth and Morbidity of Kenyan School Children,” American Journal of Human Biology 11 (1999).
33. See A. C. Pigou, The Economics of Welfare, 4th edition (London: Macmillan, 1952). See also Pitambar Pant et al., Perspectives of Development: 1961–1976, Implications of Planning for a Minimal Level of Living (New Delhi: Planning Commission of India, 1962); Irma Adelman and Cynthia T. Morris, Economic Growth and Social Equity in Developing Countries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973); Amartya Sen, “On the Development of Basic Income Indicators to Supplement the GNP Measure,” United Nations Economic Bulletin for Asia and the Far East 24 (1973); Pranab Bardhan, “On Life and Death Questions,” Economic and Political Weekly 9 (1974); Irma Adelman, “Development Economics—A Reassessment of Goals,” American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 65 (1975); A. O. Herrera et al., Catastrophe or New Society? A Latin American World Model (Ottawa: IDRC, 1976); Mahbub ul Haq, The Poverty Curtain (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976); Paul Streeten and S. Javed Burki, “Basic Needs: Some Issues,” World Development 6 (1978); Keith Griffin, International Inequality and National Poverty (London: Macmillan, 1978); Morris D. Morris, Measuring the Conditions of the World’s Poor: The Physical Quality of Life Index (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979); Graciela Chichilnisky, “Basic Needs and Global Models: Resources, Trade and Distribution,” Alternatives 6 (1980); Paul Streeten, Development Perspectives (London: Macmillan, 1981); Paul Streeten, S. Javed Burki, Mahbub ul Haq, N. Hicks and Frances Stewart, First Things First: Meeting Basic Needs in Developing Countries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Frances Stewart, Basic Needs in Developing Countries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); D. H. Costa and R. H. Steckel, “Long-Term Trends in Health, Welfare and Economic Growth in the United States,” Historical Working Paper 76, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1995; R. C. Floud and B. Harris, “Health, Height and Welfare: Britain 1700–1980,” Historical Working Paper 87, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1996; Nicholas F. R. Crafts, “Some Dimensions of the ‘Quality of Life’ during the British Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review 4 (1997); Santosh Mehrotra and Richard Jolly, eds., Development with a Human Face: Experiences in Social Achievement and Economic Growth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); A. P. Thirwall, Growth and Development, 6th edition (London: Macmillan, 1999); among other contributions.
34. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), and the su
bsequent yearly reports. Mahbub ul Haq’s own account of this innovative departure can be found in his Reflections on Human Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). See also the applications and extensions illuminatingly presented by Nicholas F. R. Crafts, “The Human Development Index and Changes in the Standard of Living: Some Historical Comparisons,” Review of European Economic History 1 (1997). The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has also been a pioneer in issuing annual reports on the lives of children; see UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), and other annual issues. Mention must also be made of the informationally rich World Development Reports produced by the World Bank, with its increasing attempt to cover more ground on living conditions. The health conditions received extensive attention in the World Development Report 1993 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
35. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, translated by D. Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, revised edition 1980), book 1, section 7, pp. 12–14. On this see Martha Nussbaum, “Nature, Function and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy (1988; supplementary volume).
36. Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776), volume 2, book 5, chapter 2.
37. Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776), volume 2, book 5, chapter 2, in the edition by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 469–71.
38. See my “Equality of What?” in Tanner Lectures on Human Values, volume 1, edited by S. McMurrin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982; Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press); reprinted in my Choice, Welfare and Measurement (1980); also in John Rawls et al., Liberty, Equality and Law, edited by S. McMurrin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), and in Stephen Darwall, ed., Equal Freedom: Selected Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995). See also my “Public Action and the Quality of Life in Developing Countries,” Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 43 (1981); Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1985); “Well-Being, Agency and Freedom” (1985); (jointly with Jean Drèze) Hunger and Public Action (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); and “Capability and Well-Being,” in The Quality of Life, edited by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).