Welfare Function
Prioritarian Parameters
Higher values give more weight to worse-off individuals
Distribution Options
Proposed Distributions
Manual Adjustment
Click on bars to adjust individual allocations
Aggregate individual utilities with utilitarian, prioritarian, and egalitarian social welfare functions—see how they treat inequality
Higher values give more weight to worse-off individuals
Click on bars to adjust individual allocations
A social welfare function aggregates individual utilities into a single measure of social good. Different welfare functions embody different ethical principles about how to balance efficiency (total welfare) against equality (distribution of welfare).
Different welfare functions make different tradeoffs between total welfare (efficiency) and equal distribution:
Social welfare functions inform policy decisions in taxation, healthcare allocation, climate change mitigation, and development economics. The choice of welfare function encodes ethical judgments about fairness and efficiency.