Equality-Tempered Prioritarianism

According to prioritarianism, the only thing that improves a state of affairs is improvements in well-being. In this, prioritarianism agrees with many traditional axiologies, including classical utilitarianism. Distinctive about prioritarianism, however, is its weighting. Simply put, all welfare benefits improve a state of affairs, but benefits to worse-off persons improve states of affairs more. All identical welfare benefits are worth more if given to a person who is less well-off. Despite its weighting, prioritarianism is an underspecified axiology. Any view between the extremes of utilitarianism, on the one hand, and leximin, on the other, is properly described as prioritarian.1 In contrast to utilitarianism, prioritarianism holds that not all benefits equal size are equally valuable. In contrast to leximin, prioritarianism holds that benefits to the worse-off do not maintain absolute priority. As Nils Holtug writes, “prioritarianism is an aggregative (indeed additive) principle . . . for any finite sum of benefits that fall at a lower level, it can be outweighed by a sufficiently large sum of benefits that fall at a–indeed any–higher level. In this respect, it differs from a principle that would give absolute priority to the very worst off.”2 Prioritarianism thus encompasses a wide range of axiological principles, depending on the specified weighting. One way to capture the prioritarian idea is by way of a piece of terminology. Call a “welfare unit” a welfare benefit of arbitrary size. For prioritarianism, the overall contribution of one welfare unit decreases as the welfare of the beneficiary of that unit increases, as shown in Figure 1.