The ethic of 'priority' is a compromise between the extremely compensatory ethic of 'welfare equality' and the needs-blind ethic of ‘income equality’. We propose an axiom of priority, and characterize resource allocation rules that are impartial, prioritarian, and solidaristic. They comprise...

Egalitarian theorists, since Rawls, have in the main advocated equalizing some objective measure of individual well-being, such as primary goods, functioning, or resources, rather than subjective welfare. This discussion, however, has assumed, implicitly, a static environment. By analyzing a...