This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: What kind of society would you rather live in: an equal one where everyone is just about getting by? Or an unequal one where most people are doing substantially better, but a small group consistently falls behind?
Now imagine having to choose that society before you were even born, but with no idea where you'll end up in it. Seen this way, inequality becomes a question of risk. Would people gamble on the unequal world, knowing they might be among the unlucky few?
Or would they stick with a basic but adequate life for all? Back in the 18th century, philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham would probably have taken the gamble. Two hundred years later, egalitarian philosopher John Rawls, who was behind this thought experiment (which he called the "veil of ignorance"), argued against it.
Economists call this an efficiency-equity trade-off: balancing fairness with the sometimes competing priority of making the most of society's finite resources. Political scientists point to such attitudes toward inequality as a fundamental difference between left and right. Yet it turns out most people want more details before answering the gamble.
How big are the gains, how severe are the losses, and how likely are they? To quantify this, our work (together with our colleague Tommaso Reggiani) measured well-being through subjective life satisfaction. Such measures have been used extensively in public policy over the past 20 years, reflecting a broader shift away from purely economic measures toward a fuller picture of how people actually experience their lives.
The Office for National Statistics asks citizens about life satisfaction on a scale from zero to 10: In the UK, 94% of people rate their life satisfaction at five or above, with the average around 7.5. We asked people to rate various hypothetical situations to help us understand how each individual uses the zero-to-10 scale. We could then put numbers on the gambles Rawls asked us to imagine.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
