An Egalitarian Argument against Reducing Deprivation

Deprivations normally give rise to undeserved inequality. It is commonly thought that one way of improving a situation with respect to equality is by reducing the incidence of deprivations. In this paper I argue that there is at least one respect in which reducing the incidence of deprivations can m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ethical theory and moral practice
Main Author: Mosquera, Julia (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V [2017]
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
IxTheo Classification:NCC Social ethics
VA Philosophy
Further subjects:B Larry Temkin
B Deprivations
B Population ethics
B Egalitarianism
B Inequality
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:Deprivations normally give rise to undeserved inequality. It is commonly thought that one way of improving a situation with respect to equality is by reducing the incidence of deprivations. In this paper I argue that there is at least one respect in which reducing the incidence of deprivations can make things worse from the point of view of equality. While eliminating deprivations leads to the elimination of inequalities, reducing the incidence of deprivations leads to an uneven distribution of the pairwise relations of inequality of a population, which leads to the concentration of pairwise relations of inequality in the worse off. If my argument is correct, egalitarians have reasons to broaden their dimensions of concern: egalitarians should not only be concerned about the unequal distribution of goods, but also about the unequal distribution of pairwise relations of inequality of a population.
ISSN:1572-8447
Contains:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-017-9842-x