The Concept of Equality in Policy Analysis

Starting from Walzer's account of `complex equality', an integrated treatment is given of three fundamental decision principles - equality of supply, proportional equality and equality of deficits - which between them exhaust all applications of `equality' considerations in policy analysis. They provide sophisticated and distinctive solutions for distributing scarce public policy benefits where individuals, households, groups or areas are recognized to have varied capacities to absorb supply. They can be applied successfully in societies with both private and public forms of supply, and where supply is lumpy or there are insufficient supply units. The equality of supply and proportional equality principles also function effectively in resource-raising contexts, where public supply is wholly negative. The choice of equality principle appropriate for a given issue area depends on: the nature of people's capacities; the information requirements of the rule; whether problems of oversupply would arise; what factors might affect the feasibility and desirability of imposing negative public supply; and what the rule's distributive implications are for different kinds of people. More substantive egalitarian arguments advocate using public supply in an investment mode not just to bring immediate distributions into conformity with one of the basic equality principles, but also to equalize capacity variations themselves over the longer term.