Fairness and Equity in Societal Decision Analysis

Imagine you divide three cookies between your two children, five-year-old Jack and two-year-old Jill. You might give Jack two cookies and Jill one cookie. But, then Jill will claim that this division is unfair, and will remain unconvinced even when you say that Jack is older and bigger and thus needs (and deserves) more food. In such a parental role, you may decide to give equal cookie allocations in the future, ignoring arguably good reasons for giving an unequal allocation. Such an equal allocation is particularly appealing when the recipients all know what each person was given and have the opportunity to express their feelings about their allocation. But, sometimes, an unequal distribution will seem to be the most fair and equitable, given the special features of the situation. For example, whenever there is a single undividable item, such as a family heirloom, which needs to be somehow allocated, the resulting distribution will be unequal, but a fair process may be used to determine the allocation. Just as it is important to consider fairness in making allocations within a family, fairness plays an important role in making societal decisions, such as where to locate hazardous facilities or how to apportion benefits and costs among different parties. In the operations research literature, fairness and equity are often used interchangeably, usually referring to perceptions of the appropriateness of allocations of risks, benefits, and costs (or of the allocation process). A variety of social science domains investigate