Egalitarian justice and interpersonal comparison

This paper surveys the strengths and weaknesses of three widely-discussed egalitarian standards of interpersonal comparison: welfare, resource, and capability. We argue that welfare egalitarianism is beset by numerous serious problems, and should be rejected. Capability and resourcist standards conform with egalitarian convictions more closely, but each faces distinctive problems. We itemise a set of desiderata which a fully adequate account of interpersonal comparison would satisfy. We conclude that the choice between capability and resourcist standards turns on the relative importance of such an account being able to accommodate reasonable pluralism and identify inequality in a publicly verifiable manner.