Skip to main content

The Direction of Welfare Change: Welfare Criteria

  • Chapter
Book cover Welfare Economics
  • 33 Accesses

Abstract

In the last chapter, we noted that the Pareto principle (someone better off, no one worse off) is a reasonable sufficient-criterion for a social improvement. However, most policy changes make some individuals better off and some worse off. Can we still have a sufficient criterion for a social improvement? This is the issue of a welfare criterion which has caused a considerable amount of debate in the literature of welfare economics.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Copyright information

© 1983 Yew-Kwang Ng

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Ng, YK. (1983). The Direction of Welfare Change: Welfare Criteria. In: Welfare Economics. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06612-4_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics