Equity Theory

Conceptual Overview

One of the most important difficulties that ET faces, given the fact that human beings are different, is its attachment to distributive justice. These interpersonal differences are so crucial to the individual that it is impossible to measure with a certain degree of precision the real impact on each individual of an equityaimed intervention. Equality of resources, for example, has been defended as one simple way to achieve equity; however, the degree of happiness or welfare achieved by each individual, even assuming they began with the same level of resources, might be very different. Moreover, personality and luck are not the only variables to consider; desires and merit, effort and capacity must also be taken into account. Then one must ask how to achieve equity if human beings are so different, if one human being with the same resources achieves different results, both objectively (i.e., wealth) and subjectively (i.e., felicity).

Three big blocks of literature in ET might be useful to deal with the problem of equity, what can be called the libertarian, the liberal, and the communitarian approaches. For the libertarian, to achieve equity implies to take seriously the Kantian maxim that individuals should be taken always as ends and never as means. The state involvement is minimized, only assuring that human beings can enjoy their basic rights to property and life. Therefore, to be forced to contribute to another's welfare violates the rights of an individual because it violates the self-ownership principle: The first and most important possession of an individual is himor herself. The problem, then, with the attempt to equalize is that it tends to intervene arbitrarily over the self-ownership of persons. Trying to cope with inequity creating artificial rules or norms can only produce worse effects on liberty because nobody can assure that a distributional system is not used under the effects of envy rather than justice.

The liberal position, with Rawls as its main personality, argues for freedom as a main value, but considers unacceptable that injustice be allowed in the name of liberty. Entitlements are often arbitrary (i.e., gene provisions of an individual), so nobody strictly “deserves” his or her talents or capacities. It is true, the liberals say, that envy exists and therefore it is important that any mechanism for equity and justice address this. Rawls argues that we are different but that we have an equal moral status that forces us to create impartial institutions. Impartial institutions can achieve equity, since they take the differences among human beings into consideration and assure that the arbitrary advantages of some ultimately work to produce better results for the less advantaged people (principle of difference). Under conditions of equality, under a “veil of ignorance,” Rawls argues that rational persons, without knowing their advantaged or disadvantaged position in life and society, would argue for a principle of difference. Perfect equality would not be possible, but equity would be, since the natural and logical differences among humans would produce the best results available even for the less advantaged (under the principle of maximin).

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