We generalize Hammond's characterisation of leximin by introducing a very weak two-person equity condition. In addition to strengthening the defence of the leximin principle, this result is of interest from a more technical point of view. Contrary to the present understanding in the literature...

The basic problem in poverty measurement is how to weigh the income of different groups. This is a normative problem on which people differ in opinion, and hence we should seek a way of dealing with the issue that takes into account this plurality. In the paper, we suggest an approach to poverty...

We evaluate the costs of three different programs for alleviating long term poverty: (i) workfare, or grants made contingent on a work requirement, (ii) universal welfare, or unconditional grants, and (iii) meanstested welfare, or grants conditioned on private labor market earnings. We identify...

It has been argued that any plausible egalitarian theory should give asbolute priority to the worst off in a conflict with the best off in society. In this paper, we show that this framework is closely linked to the leximin approach, and on the basis of a condition named the conditional...