University College London

School of Public Policy

April 3rd

9.45 – Registration, Coffee

10.30 - 12.30 Introduction to Research Programme, and general discussion. ( Jo Wolff , UCL)

The apparent mismatch between the most sophisticated contemporary work on distributive justice and how governments and agencies could actually take such work into account in making decisions. A discussion of the types of decisions such bodies face; the apparent pervasiveness of cost-benefit analysis; and the prospects for exploring alternatives, informed by contemporary political philosophy.

12.45 – Lunch

2.00 – 3.30 'Egalitarianism and Empirical Enquiry: An Example from Gender Inequality' Marc Stears and Jude Brown ( Cambridge )

3.30 - Tea

4.00 - 5.30 ‘Valuing Health, Healthcare, and Health Equality' (Donald Franklin, Dept of Health reply by Saladin Meckled Garcia, UCL)

ABSTRACT: How should health services best be allocated between citizens in different health conditions and with different socio-economic characteristics? This note contrasts answers to this question on the basis of utilitarian and of broader conceptions of the value of healthcare, within a Cost Benefit Analytical framework.

Within a utilitarian interpretation of “benefit”, a skewing of the allocation of healthcare to favour the deprived is unlikely to be justified. An independent social justice objective is required. Furthermore, the implicit fungibility of all forms of health with other sources of utility is consistent neither with the importance that we accord to provision of health services nor with an objective to narrow specifically health inequalities.

An alternative understanding of the value of health services might view health not as a consumer good, but as a basic capability (in Amartya Sen's terms). Procurement of healthcare to enhance capability is an expression of society's respect for its members, and is of value as such. Similarly, procurement of health services that mitigate pain expresses society's compassion. And an egalitarian bias in distribution of these services becomes an expression of society's equal respect and equal compassion for all its members.

There are important methodological implications of these alternative understandings of health and healthcare. Whereas conventional “willingness to pay” surveys well capture the benefits of pain alleviation, alternative methodologies are required to measure impacts upon capability and to gauge the value of healthcare as an expression of equal concern and respect.

April 4th

9.30- 10.30 Fair Social Choice ( Marc Fleurbaey , Pau )

Abstract: It has become accepted that social choice is impossible in absence of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. This view is challenged here. Arrow obtained an impossibility theorem only by making unreasonable demands on social choice functions. With reasonable requirements, one can get very attractive possibilities and derive social preferences on the basis of non-comparable individual preferences. This new approach makes it possible to design cost-benefit criteria and optimal second-best institutions inspired by principles of fairness, while traditionally this kind of analysis was thought to require interpersonal comparisons of well-being. In particular, this new approach turns out to be especially suitable for the application of recent philosophical theories of justice formulated in terms of fairness, such as equality of resources.

10.30 Coffee

10.50 – 11.50 Justice in Transport ( Nick Tyler , UCL)

Abstract . For the last hundred years or so, transport and planning systems have been based on the assumption that people had access to a car. What happens to people who have no such opportunity? Rural shops and facilities close, urban city centres degenerate leaving poorer people with little or no local goods and services. The increase in movement accorded to that part of the population with access to a car has left the other part of the population worse off than they had been before. This has had particularly bad consequences for those members of society who are already losing out, especially poor, elderly, disabled and young people. These people are dependent on others: neighbours, family or friends (if they have them), or what society chooses to dispense (if they don't).

This is often seen as a transport, urban or rural planning problem. However, it is much more serious than that. People are being left without access to fundamental aspects of society: healthcare, education, legal and electoral rights in addition to affordable nutritious food. As a result they are losing out on the benefits of living within a society because the transport system is unable to accommodate their needs. The direction taken by transport and planning over the past hundred years or so has managed to open up enormous opportunities for some elements of society at the expense of restricting access to basic rights for others.

The problem now is that society has designed itself to be inaccessible for certain parts of the population who have no means of reaching what are often considered basic aspects of modern life. These people are excluded from full participation in society as a result of a conscious decision to encourage movement rather than access. This has the unintended consequence that those who are unable, for whatever reason, to avail themselves of the means of movement, are also unable to obtain independent access to activities to which they are theoretically entitled as of right. This is inherently unjust.

Transport should be available to all in a form that they can use independently because it is the means by which access to the fundamental activities is obtained. In general, this means what we might call ‘public transport': a transport system which the public is able to use. This suggests that the default transport system – the one that should be designed and implemented as a starting point – is the public transport system in its widest sense. Design for car traffic is secondary: it includes one part of the population at the expense of the rest. Devising measures that will help planners to plan such a system and which will demonstrate that access is sufficient is a matter of urgency. Such a measure would allow society to decide exactly what it means by ‘sufficient' transport – e.g. maximum walking time to a doctor's surgery, fresh food, school – and to allocate funds accordingly. The provision of accessible transport is a necessary element of making a just society.

12.00 - 1.00 Priority, Equality and Positional Goods: The Case of Education ( Adam Swift , Oxford )

Abstract . The paper will explore the way positional goods relate to priority and equality by looking at the example of education. Positional goods are those whose value to their possessor depends not on the absolute amount she enjoys but the amount relative to others, or on her place in the distribution of the good. In so far as goods are positional, the way to maximise their value to the worst off is to distribute them equally. Unfortunately, that is the beginning, not the end, of the story. Focusing on the good of education, the paper will explore various complications: (1 ) that positional goods often have a non-positional aspect which can make priority a genuinely different goal from equality;

(2) that inequalities even with respect to goods that have a strongly positional aspect may be justified by appeal to prioritarian considerations in relation to other goods (e.g. the value of permitting parents to invest in their children's education may justify inequality with respect to education on the grounds that doing so will serve, over time, to maximise the economic resources available to the least advantaged);

(3) that there are normative issues concerning the individual motivations (such as self-interest, or partial concern for the well-being of one's children) that typically force us to choose between equality and priority.

1.00 Lunch

2.15 - 3.15 Employment and Seniority Privileges ( Axel Gosseries , Louvain )

Abstract : Companies rely on seniority for a variety of purposes ranging from ranking employees for promotion or layoff, designing wage profiles, defining the length of reasonable advance notice term, to defining who should have priority for deciding when to take holidays. Despite repeated predictions as to a decline of its use and/or practical importance , seniority remains in effect a very significant allocatory criterion for employment benefits in the western world. What should we think from an egalitarian point of view about the allocation of employment benefits on a seniority basis in private companies? This is the question we shall be addressing in this paper.

3.15 Tea

3.45 - 5.00 Future Plans and Prospects

An application has been made to the ESRC for funding for future seminars. The funds will allow six seminars over two years. Other sources of funding may be available if this is turned down (a decision is expected at the end of April). Is there sufficient interest to justify such a continuing programme? If so how should future events be structured? What are the most important emerging issues? Who should be invited to speak? Where should future seminars take place?

Second workshop: UCL September 2003

Third workshop: Kennedy School, Harvard April 2004

Fourth workshop: UCL September 15th-16th, 2004 (enquiries j.wolff@ucl.ac.uk)