Matthew Adler "Measuring Social Welfare, with Priority for the Worse Off"

Mon 23 May 2022

Faculty of Divinity

The social welfare function (SWF) framework is a powerful tool for evaluating governmental policies in light of human well-being. It represents a major step beyond cost-benefit analysis, currently the dominant policy-assessment tool. While cost-benefit analysis quantifies well-being impacts in monetary units, the SWF framework does so using an interpersonally comparable well-being measure.
The SWF proper is a rule for ranking outcomes and policies understood as patterns of individual well-being. “Prioritarian” SWFs give extra weight to well-being changes affecting individuals at lower levels of well-being—by contrast with utilitarianism, which simply adds up well-being numbers.
Measuring Social Welfare (2019) provides a rigorous but accessible overview and defense of the SWF framework. In this lecture, Matthew Adler will discuss Measuring Social Welfare, with a particular focus on prioritarianism.

Cost: Free