Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/305552 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 11310
Publisher: 
CESifo GmbH, Munich
Abstract: 
There is no consensus on how to measure social welfare and inequality when households have different needs. As we show, a dilemma emerges between holding households responsible for their needs or compensating them. This dilemma is of first-order importance for social welfare, but generally plays a minor role in the measurement of inequality. To address this impasse, we introduce partial compensation. Our axiomatic characterizations reveal novel families of welfare criteria and, with the extension to multidimensional commodity spaces, provide ready-to-use criteria for the analysis of redistributive policies.
Subjects: 
household needs
transfer principles
equity-efficiency trade-off
welfare criteria
JEL: 
D30
D63
I31
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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