INEQUALITY REEXAMINED AMARTYA SEN RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION - NEW YORK CLARENDON PRESS - OXFORD 1992Contents Preface Introduction: Questions and Themes 1, EQUALITY OF WHAT? 1.1 Why Equality? What Equality? 1.2 Impartiality and Equality 1.3 Human Diversity and Basal Equality 1.4 Equality versus Liberty? 1.5 Plurality and Alleged Emptiness 1.6 Means and Freedoms 1.7 Income Distribution, Well-Being and Freedom 2, FREEDOM, ACHIEVEMENT AND RESOURCES 2.1 Freedom and Choice 2.2 Real Income, Opportunities and Selection 23 Freedom Distinguished from Resources 3. FUNCTIONINGS AND CAPABILITY 3.1 Capability Sets 3.2 Value Objects and Evaluative Spaces 3.3 Selection and Weighting 3.4 Incompleteness: Fundamental and Pragmatic 3.5 Capability or Functionings? 3.6 Utility vis-A-vis Capability 4, FREEDOM, AGENCY AND WELL-BEING 4.2 Agency, Instrumentality and Realization 4.3 Can Freedom Conflict with Well-Being? 44 Freedom and Disadvantageous Choices 4.5. Control and Effective Freedom 4.6 Freedom from Hunger, Malaria and Other Maladies 4.7 The Relevance of Well-Being 5. JUSTICE AND CAPABILITY 5.1 The Informational Bases of Justice 12 2 16 19 21 2B 26 31 31 4 36 39 39, 2 46 49. 33 56 56 37 59) 62 66 0 B Bviii ‘Contents 5.2 Rawlsian Justice and the Political Conception 5.3 Primary Goods and Capabilities 5A Diversities: Ends and Personal Characteristics 6. WELFARE ECONOMICS AND INEQUALITY 6.1 Space Choice and Evaluative Purpose 6.2 Shortfalls, Attainments and Potentials 6.3 Inequality, Welfare and Justice 6.4 Welfare-Based Inequality Evaluation 7. POVERTY AND AFFLUENCE 7.1 Inequality and Poverty 7.2 The Nature of Poverty 7.3. Lowness vis-a-vis Inadequacy of Incomes 7.4 Do Concepts Matter? 7.5 Poverty in Rich Countries 8. CLASS, GENDER AND OTHER GROUPS 8.1 Class and Classification 8.2 Gender and Inequality 8.3 Interregional Contrasts 9. THE DEMANDS OF EQUALITY 9.1 Questions of Equality 9.2 Equality, Space and Diversity 9.3 Plurality, Incompleteness and Evaluation 9.4 Data, Observations and Effective Freedoms 9.5 Aggregation, Egalitarianism and Efficiency 9.6 Alternative Defences of Inequality 9.7 Incentives, Diversity and Egalitarianism 9.8 On Equality as a Social Concern 9.9 Responsibility and Fairness 9.10 Capability, Freedom and Motivations References Index of Names Index of Subjects 15 79 85 88 88 89 93 95 102 102 107 109 412 114 17 17 122 125 129 129 130 131 135 136 138 141 143, 148. 150 153 199 205 Preface ‘Tus monograph, as the title indicates, is about re-examining in- equality. But itis 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 wha?’ I also argue that a common charac- teristic of virtually all the approaches to the ethies 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. Talso 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.