DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES

IZA DP No. 2284

Equity and Equality

Jean-Yves Duclos

September 2006

Forschungsinstitut
zur Zukunft der Arbeit
Institute for the Study
of Labor
 Equity and Equality

Jean-Yves Duclos
Université Laval, CIRPÉE
and IZA Bonn

Discussion Paper No. 2284

September 2006

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IZA Discussion Paper No. 2284
September 2006

ABSTRACT

Equity and Equality*

Is horizontal equity (HE) the "most widely accepted principle of equity"? Or does it stand in
"opposition to the advancement of human welfare"? This paper argues that the case for the
HE principle is not as straightforward as is usually thought and that it requires advanced
notions of justice and wellbeing. The most likely ethical basis for HE appears to combine a
Rawlsian maximin principle and a view of well-being that allows for relative local comparison
effects. The paper also explores some of the dimensions of equality and well-being along
which the HE principle can be applied and presents a number of examples showing how HE
considerations can provide an important input into policy analysis.

JEL Classification: D31, D60, D63, I30

Keywords: horizontal equity, vertical equity, redistribution, equality, social justice

Corresponding author:

Jean-Yves Duclos
Université Laval, Département d'économique
Bureau 2186, Pavillon de Sève
Ste-Foy (Québec)
Canada G1K 7P4
E-mail: [email protected]

*
Paper presented at the Innis Lecture of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Economics
Association, Montréal, 26 May 2006. I am grateful to Yoram Amiel, Abdelkrim Araar, Frank Cowell,
Marc-André Goyette, Josée Leblanc, Pierre Lefebvre, Philip Merrigan and Johanne Perron for their
collaboration, to Russell Davidson and Lars Osberg for their comments, and to Gérard Gaudet for
kindly offering me the opportunity to prepare and present this Lecture. This research was partly funded
by the PEP programme of the International Development Research Centre, by Canada’s SSHRC, and
by Québec’s FQRSC.
1 Introduction
Two broad redistributive principles govern the analysis of the impact of govern-
ment policies. The first — vertical equity (VE) – serves to assess the equity of
that impact on individuals with differing initial levels of "wellbeing"; the second
— horizontal equity (HE) — helps evaluate the equity of the impact across indi-
viduals who are equal in all "relevant respects". This paper’s primary objective is
to enquire into the foundations of the HE principle and to address in the process
the appropriate meaning of the phrases well-being and relevant respects.
In the narrower context of the redistribution of "standards of living" (which,
for short, we will denote here as income), VE usually requires that the net fiscal
burden (which can be negative) should increase with individuals’ capacity to pay,
a capacity which is usually captured by pre-tax income. HE, in turn, is typically
understood as demanding that individuals with equal capacities to pay should be
treated equally by the net tax system1 . Out of these two redistributive principles,
it is that of HE which has generally received the least attention in the literature.
Some have argued that this is because HE is the less controversial of the two
principles:
"Perhaps the most widely accepted principle of equity in taxation is
that people in equal positions should be treated equally". (Musgrave
1959, p. 160)
It is further claimed that, depending on one’s attitude towards vertical fairness and
inequality, the implications in terms of VE can vary considerably, but those of the
HE principle appear to remain essentially invariant across analysts2 .
A closer look at the literature reveals, however, that the view that HE is both
broadly accepted and equally understood meets with some criticism. Take for
instance the skepticism of Kaplow (2000) that "Horizontal Equity should not be
measured and new measures of social welfare should not be deployed until we
know what we are trying to measure and why" (p. 22), or the view that "From
Musgrave (1959) on, there is a general agreement that horizontal equity is impor-
tant, but little agreement on quite what it is."3
The main objective of this paper is thus to explore possible foundations for the
HE principle. It first describes in more details the concepts of vertical and hor-
izontal equity and suggests some normative and positive justifications for them.
1
See among many others Musgrave (1959, 1990) and Lambert (2001).
2
See for instance Musgrave (1990).
3
Auerbach and Hassett (1999), p.1.

2
A negative result is that the usual formulations of the two main theories that un-
derlie much of the modern formulation of distributive justice do not lend direct
support to HE as a normative principle of fairness. A more positive result is that
an ethical basis for HE can be provided by combining relative well-being effects
and a Rawlsian-type veil of ignorance, and that HE can and can often usefully be
applied to dimensions of well-being other than income. The paper also discusses
some of the senses that can be attributed to the term "equals" in the definition of
HE and points to some of the dimensions of wellbeing on which the HE principle
can and should be applied. The paper further categorises and presents a number
of real-life policy examples in which concerns for HE arise naturally.
The link between this paper and the work of Harold Adams Innis, whom this
Innis lecture honours, might seem tenuous at first sight. Although Innis is more
widely known for his contributions as the "father" of Canadian economic history,
and in particular for his staple theory of Canadian economic development, he
was, however, also intrigued by how prevalent modes of thinking, social network
effects and media influence were able to shape both the nature of economics and
the economics profession4 . It was clear to Innis that the ethical values of elites
(including those of academics) directly influenced government economic policy.
It is in this spirit and to such "elites" that this paper is directed, hoping modestly
that it can help sharpen views on what I believe to be important ethical issues.

2 Foundations of vertical equity

We start by describing briefly two classes of foundations for VE. The first will be
normative and argumentative, and the second will be positive and utilitarian. They
will prove useful when we consider the case for HE in Section 3.

2.1 Ethical foundations

Since the 1970s, the modern formulation of VE has been shaped by the writings
of a number of influential thinkers, of whom the most well-known are probably
John Rawls and Amartya Sen. This modern formulation discards the emphasis
placed by utilitarians on the space of utilities in favour of a focus on a space of
real freedoms or capabilities, distinguishing in the process that latter space from
the space of resources. This formulation of VE also emphasizes the importance
4
See for instance Neill, Robin. "Harold Adams Innis". EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert
Whaples. January 10, 2005; http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/Neill.Innis

3
of individual preferences and freedom of choice in the movement from the space
of real freedoms to a vector of actual functionings.
In order to understand this relatively "advanced" conception of equity, it is first
useful to distinguish between two definitions of freedom: formal freedom and real
freedom. Formal freedom consists in a formal/legal right to be or to have X, say.
It only constitutes a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for real freedom,
which is the actual capacity to be or to do X. Broadly speaking, the set of real
freedoms to which someone has access is a function both of formal freedoms and
of the resources and socio-economic conditions required to act on them.
Given this, the principal obstacle encountered by any attempt to universalize
the definition of VE in the space of resources or of capabilities is the heterogeneity
of individual points of view on the matter. Owing to the diversity of acquired and
innate preferences and of socio-economic interests, individuals can indeed display
widely differing opinions on the importance of welfare redistribution in a society.
Thus, it is usually impossible to generate a consensus on the definition of equity
from the individual points of view that are observed in an actual society.
Drawing on the veil of ignorance argument advanced by Harsanyi (1955), an
influential modern foundation of VE derives from a definition that all members of
a society would, it is argued, defend if they were behind that veil — i.e. if they
were in a situation of total ignorance regarding the position they will occupy in
society and also regarding the preferences they will initially possess or acquire in
their specific socio-economic milieu. For Rawls (1971), this leads to a definition
of equity in terms of the allocation of certain types of primary goods (or capabil-
ities — see Sen 1985a). Those primary goods are things "which it is supposed a
rational man wants whatever else he wants" and which, regardless of what an in-
dividual’s preferences and actual choices may be, "he would prefer more of rather
than less" (Rawls 1971, p. 92). Rawls’ general conception of justice is then that
"All social primary goods — liberty and opportunity, income and
wealth, and the bases of self-respect — are to be distributed equally
unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods is to the
advantage of the least favored." (Rawls 1971, p. 303)
This is the well-known "maxi-min" rawlsian rule in the space of capabilities.
In addition to the plurality of redistributive views in the absence of a veil of
ignorance, there can also be an heterogeneity of needs and handicaps across in-
dividuals that must be accounted for in sizing capabilities. Sen (1985a) stresses
indeed that different people might have different "conversion factors" from re-
sources to capacities. It might also seem reasonable to consider inputs such as

4
"talents", "productivity", or "intelligence" as determinants of the capabilities to
which one has access since these inputs are primarily bequeathed to individuals
by nature or inculcated by its environment. For Sen, the concept over which to
define equity is the capability set from which a person might be able to choose.
Sen (1985a) thus opts to construe Rawls’ primary goods as capabilities, and thus
to define equity in a capability space, from which individuals can subsequently
freely choose their actual functionings — or actual chosen outcomes.
To illustrate this construct, consider Figure 1, which shows in four quadrants
the links between income (or resources, or Sen’s command over commodities),
consumption of two commodities A and B, and the functionings FA and FB as-
sociated to the consumption of each of these two commodities. The northeast
quadrant shows a typical budget set for the two commodities and for a budget
constraint Y1 . The curve U1 shows the usual indifference curve along which the
person chooses his preferred commodity bundle, which is here located at point α.
The northwestern and the southeastern quadrants then transform the consump-
tion of goods A and B into associated functionings FA and FB . This is done
through the functioning Transformation Curves T CA and T CB , for transforma-
tion of consumption of A and B, respectively5 . These curves thus transform the
space of commodities into the southwestern space of functionings. Because of po-
tentially different transformation curves (in the presence of handicaps, say), two
persons with the same commodity budget set can thus face different capability
sets. Using the budget set limited by Y1 , we can then draw a frontier S1 in the
space of functionings to which the person has access — this defines the capability
set. Since the person chooses point α in the space of commodities, he enjoys β’s
combination of functionings.
Assuming that the greatest possible set of formal freedoms has been guaran-
teed to everyone, Rawls’ conception of justice requires the maximisation of the
smallest capability set, regardless of the actual choice of functionings that will be
made by individuals. While recognizing the role of individual responsibility and
preferences in the choice of final outcomes/functionings, this formulation of ver-
tical distributive justice thus calls for reducing inequality in capabilities6 . There
is therefore a fundamental distinction between equity in the distribution of capa-
bilities and equality in the distribution of resources and of functionings, owing to
the heterogeneity in needs and in preferences.
5
Sen (1985a) defines these curves as "personal utilization functions".
6
Or opportunities — see World Bank (2005) for a recent influential use of that formulation of
equity.

5
2.2 Utilitarian foundations for VE
2.2.1 Social cohesion
Vertical equity in resource distribution has long been considered an important
condition for social cohesion, stability, and even survival. This is apparent in
Plato’s expression of the following concern:

"We maintain that if a state is to avoid the greatest plague of all—I

mean civil war, though civil disintegration would be a better term—
extreme poverty and wealth must not be allowed to arise in any sec-
tion of the citizen-body, because both lead to both these disasters.
That is why the legislator must now announce the acceptable limits
of wealth and poverty. The lower limit of poverty must be the value
of the holding. The legislator will use the holding as his unit of mea-
sure and allow a man to possess twice, thrice, and up to four times its
value." (The Laws, Book V, quoted in Cowell 1995, p. 21–22)

More egalitarian societies thus presumably have a greater likelihood of establish-

ing a better social and political balance. More than two thousand years later, the
same message is essentially carried out in the modern economics literature, where
it is often argued and reported that equality improves the functioning of economic
and political institutions, increases security and social capital, and reduces the
adverse effects of capital market imperfections on behavior and growth.7

2.2.2 Altruism and envy

An alternative utilitarian conception of social justice argues that individuals are
not only altruistic and concerned about the welfare of others, but they have diffi-
culty dealing with feelings of envy, relative deprivation and exclusion. The pur-
pose of VE is then to correct inequality in the distribution of welfare so as to
reduce the incidence on individuals’ welfare of the negative externality generated
by this inequality. Such an externality can also be detrimental to the good func-
tioning of markets and institutions. To quote Plato again,

"The community which has neither poverty nor riches will al-
ways have the noblest principles; in it there is no insolence
7
For a review of the main arguments, see World Bank (2005). See also Esteban and Ray (2006)
for an example of how political economy considerations and inequality can lead to inefficient
institutions and policy choices and can therefore hinder growth and welfare.

6
 or injustice, nor, again, are there any contentions or envy-
ings." (The Laws, Book III, translated by Benjamin Jowett;
http://philosophy.eserver.org/plato/laws.txt)

Such a source of concern for VE is also compatible with the unease with re-
gard to inequality reported by Alesina, Di Tellab, and MacCulloch (2004), who
find that "[i]ndividuals have a lower tendency to report themselves happy when
inequality is high, even after controlling for individual income, a large set of per-
sonal characteristics, and year and country (...) dummies" (p. 2009). Indeed,
according to Wilkinson (1996) and several others in a relatively unsettled litera-
ture, it is not so much a matter of being poor (in terms of absolute standards of
living) that impacts on one’s health, but it is rather one’s socio-economic status
relative to other members of the society. Socio-economic inequalities tend to fos-
ter anxiety, stress, frustration, hostility, fear, and insecurity among people living
in unequal environments.
An additional source of support for the externality correcting role of VE is
provided by observations suggesting that individuals’ behaviour is not as selfish as
standard economic theory generally postulates. The recent experimental literature
(bolstered by experiments of the "ultimatum" or "dictatorial" game type) generally
rejects the hypothesis that individuals are exclusively bent on their own egocentric
interest. On the contrary, that literature reports that they would be prepared to
partially forgo this interest in order to promote altruistic and social values8 .

2.2.3 Zero-sum distribution of consumption utilities

Another utilitarian reason for promoting equality of capabilities and outcomes is
that, once a basic standard of living has been exceeded, inequality may give rise
to an inefficient zero-sum competitive consumerism. Surveys on the subject of
happiness and health tend indeed to suggest that the consumption of "unneces-
sary" goods essentially represents a consumption for "positioning" vis-à-vis oth-
ers. This consumption improves the individual’s position relative to others but, in
and of itself, yields little or no increase in welfare. According to this argument,
positioning consumption causes nearly as much deprivation and damage to others
as it creates satisfaction and wellbeing for its beneficiaries. It also undermines
the less monetized, the less visible, and the less private spheres of human activity.
One ardent advocate of this point of view is Frank (2000):
8
See for instance Fehr and Fischbacher (2003).

7
 "All of us — rich and poor alike, but especially the rich — are spend-
ing more time at the office and taking shorter vacations; we are spend-
ing less time with our families and friends; and we have less time for
sleep, exercise, travel, reading and other activities that help main-
tain body and soul. Because of the decline in our savings rate, our
economic growth rate has slowed, and a rising number of families
feel apprehensive about their ability to maintain their living standards
during retirement. At a time when our spending on luxury goods is
growing four times as fast as overall spending, our highways, bridges,
water supply systems, and other parts of our public infrastructure are
deteriorating, placing lives in danger." (p. 5)
According to this view, inequality thus encourages the allocation of resources in
an inefficient zero-sum consumption game and leads individual choices away from
the social optimum.

3 Foundations of horizontal equity

As seen in the introduction, the principle of horizontal equity (HE) stipulates that
individuals who are equal in all relevant respects must be treated equally by the
government. This is the classical formulation of the principle of horizontal equity.
A usual corollary is that government intervention should not reverse the ranking
of individuals in the distribution of well-being9 . This is the alternative reranking
formulation of the HE principle.

3.1 Utilitarian foundations

Many of the utilitarian justifications for the VE principle mentioned in Section
2.2.1 can be invoked to support the HE principle. The main difference is that HE
deals with local inequality, whereas VE concerns global inequality.

3.1.1 Relative well-being and relative local comparisons

Government policies that discriminate between ethically comparable individuals
give rise to resentment and insecurity amongst them and can also lead to social
9
See, for instance, Feldstein (1976), p. 87, for an influential contribution along those lines, and
Duclos, Jalbert, and Araar (2003) for a discussion of the equivalence between these two formula-
tions.

8
and political unrest. Exclusion and discrimination can have an impact both on
individual welfare and on feelings of social cohesion; this is particularly true for
policies that discriminate among those that are alike since individuals often specif-
ically compare their treatment with that of others who enjoy a similar standard of
living or display similar characteristics.
For example, the theory of relative deprivation (which is well documented in
the socio-psychological literature) suggests that people often specifically compare
their relative individual fortune with that of others in similar or close circum-
stances. In a discussion of the post-war British welfare state, Runciman (1966)
notes for instance that

"the reference groups of the recipients of welfare were virtually

bound to remain within the broadly delimited area of potential fellow-
beneficiaries. It was anomalies within this area which were the focus
of successive grievances, not the relative prosperity of people not ob-
viously comparable."(p.71)

Similarly, in his theory of social comparison processes, Festinger (1954) argues

that "given a range of possible persons for comparison, someone close to one’s
own ability or opinion will be chosen for comparison" (p.121). Frank and Cook
(1995) observe the same phenomenon of horizontal comparisons amongst workers
and consumers:

"People tend to be more concerned about how their salaries compare

with those of closely associated coworkers than with those of people
who work outside their organizations." (p. 58)

According to Frank (2005), the roots of this phenomenon may even be found
in evolutionary theory, by which it is necessary to outpace one’s nearest rivals
to maximize one’s survival chances, since "[i]n evolutionary terms, falling behind
one’s local rivals can be lethal, whereas comparisons with others who are distant in
time or space are typically irrelevant." (p. 138) Frank (2005) also reports evidence
from the neuro sciences that the effect of local "races" and concerns can even be
monitored physiologically in the human brain:

"For example, local rank appears to affect, and be affected by, con-
centrations of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which regulates moods
and behavior. Within limits, elevated serotonin concentrations are as-
sociated with enhanced feelings of well-being." (p.138)

9
 Comparisons with others also seem to affect a number of behavioral dimen-
sions, such as financial market behavior, criminal activity, labor market behav-
ior, migration, job choices, employee effort — see Clark, Masclet, and Villeval
(2006) for a useful review. Clark, Masclet, and Villeval (2006) also find with their
own data that individual effort depends not only on one’s own incomes but also
on one’s income relative to others, and that rank in the local income distribution
seems to matter even more in that respect than the level of relative income.

3.1.2 Loss aversion and process utility

One upshot of HI is to introduce absolute and relative gains and losses whose
impacts on individuals’ welfare can be asymmetric. This asymmetry arises ar-
guably from the fact that negative aspects of discrimination are not experienced in
the same way as the positive effects of this same discrimination. In other words,
an equivalent loss or gain of status will be perceived differently. Smith (1759,
(1982)) had long ago already hinted to this:

"Pain (...) is, in almost all cases, a more pungent sensation than
the opposite and correspondent pleasure. The one almost always de-
presses us much more below the ordinary, or what may be called the
natural state of our happiness, than the other ever raises us above it."
(quoted in Ashraf and Loewenstein 2005, pp. 132–133)

Results from the neuro sciences in recent years have, incidentally, provided a
physiological foundation for this asymmetry, in that pain and pleasure are gener-
ated separately and differently by our brain10 :

"Brain imaging technology has shown that losses and gains are
processed in different regions of the brain (O’Doherty, Kringel-
bach, Rolls, Hornak, and Andrews 2001), suggesting that gains and
losses may be processed in qualitatively different ways." (Ashraf and
Loewenstein 2005, p. 133)
10
If indeed "pain is a more pungent sensation than the opposite and correspondent pleasure",
then we also have an explanation for the media bias of "reporting bad news more often than good
news" that many of us believe to exist. Since an important goal of the mass media is to attract
attention and consumers through the generation of sentiments, a preference for reporting bad news
makes economic sense. In that respect, Harold Innis would certainly have enjoyed investigating the
impact, on individual and collective senses of well-being, of modern technological developments,
greater informational abundance, and fiercer competition in the market for media.

10
 This leads us quite directly to an explanation for an observation that is now
well established in experimental economics, to wit that individuals appear more
inclined to seek to retain what they have than to acquire things they do not have
— a phenomenon known alternatively as "loss aversion" or as the "endowment
effect". Losses loom larger than gains. One consequence is the "status quo effect":
the status quo is seen as a safe alternative, and consumers are observed to be
reluctant to trade away from an initial position:
"In general, people seem willing to pay more to keep something al-
ready in their possession (endowment) than to acquire the same item
had they not already owned it." (Thaler 1982, p. 179)
The above suggests that pain and pleasure originate both from absolute
changes in welfare and from changes relative to others, and that is worse to fall
behind than to move ahead others — this being manifested among other things in
the consumption of status goods. This provides a utilitarian foundation for HE as
well as the basis for a possible ethical foundation for the HE principle — as we
will discuss later.
Finally, experimental evidence (from, e.g., "ultimatum", "dictator" and "public
good" games) and common intuition suggest that utility is affected by processes,
not just outcomes, and that the usual presumption in economics that people’s pref-
erences are "self-regarding" and "outcome oriented" may thus be misleading:
"There is much evidence, both from within economics, and from other
disciplines, that (...) people care both about other people, and about
how social transactions occur — not just the outcomes". (Henrich,
Boyd, Bowles, Camerer, Fehr, and Gintis 2004, p.1)
Again, such effects can help justify a concern for HE on utilitarian grounds.

3.2 Ethical foundations

Although HE may be defendable on utilitarian grounds, it would appear that HE
does not receive support from the two most prominent modern theories of justice,
at least as they are usually exposed.

3.2.1 HE and VE
A popular claim is that a desire for HE can simply derive from an aversion to
inequality, without invoking a separate normative basis for HE, since HI pulls

11
equals apart and thus increases global vertical inequality. In his early considera-
tion of HE, Robert Musgrave, an influential contributor to the development of the
HE principle, went even further, arguing that HE meant little in the absence of a
definition of VE:
"Without a scheme of vertical equity, the requirement of horizontal
equity at best becomes a safeguard against capricious discrimina-
tion(...). To mean more than this, the principle of horizontal equity
must be seen against the backdrop of an explicit view of vertical eq-
uity." (Musgrave 1959, p. 160)
VE and HE are, however, two different principles, and in a second-best world it
does not follow that VE is necessarily maximized by minimizing HI. Said differ-
ently, of two feasible redistributive policies, one can very well lead to greater VE
but at a cost of greater HI, and there will therefore usually be a trade-off in the
application of the two principles. This has led several authors (including Stiglitz
1982, Balcer and Sadka 1986 and Hettich 1983) to argue that HE needs an ethical
treatment that is separate from that of VE. But what ethical basis there is for an
independent HE principle is not entirely clear in the literature, an issue to which
we now turn.

3.2.2 Procedural fairness

One attempt at providing an independent ethical basis for HE is to argue that
justice requires the avoidance of all forms of arbitrary discrimination in the gov-
ernment’s treatment of citizens. Individuals of equal worth should be valued and
treated equally by the government. Such a rationale for HE is then primarily borne
of a concern for procedural fairness — unlike for VE, for which it is the end-result
that is of concern. This can be supported a priori by drawing on the 17th-century
social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke, which have been sharpened in the
influential work of Nozick (1974).
According to these theories, the state of nature in which individuals were liv-
ing before the formation of the State has granted individuals legitimate rights and
entitlements that only allow for the existence of a minimal State, "limited to the
narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of con-
tracts, and so on"; and "that any more extensive state will violate persons’ rights
not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified (...)." (Nozick 1974, p.
ix) In particular, forced governmental redistribution from rich to poor is unjust in
that ethical framework. Nozick stresses that outcomes are the result of a series of

12
processes and argues that the correct focus for a theory of justice should be on the
fairness of the processes that lead to the end-result. If a particular allocation de-
parts from a fair initial state (an important caveat of course) through a fair process,
then the outcome should be judged fair. Nozick summarises thus the difference
between this principle of justice and the "time-slice" (or "end-result") principles
of justice:
"The entitlement theory of justice in distribution is historical; whether
a distribution is just depends upon how it came about. In contrast,
current time-slice principles of justice hold that the justice of a dis-
tribution is determined by how things are distributed (who has what)
as judged by some structural principle(s) of just distribution. (...)
Welfare economics is the theory of current time-slice principles of
justice." (Nozick 1974, pp. 153–154)
This being said, such entitlement theories of justice are consistent neither with
the Pareto principle nor with the HE principle. It may well be that the formation
of a minimal state can be expected to generate a Pareto improvement, but the
feasibility of further such paretian improvements can in no way be invoked to
justify a larger-than-minimal state. Again, it is not the end result that matters, but
the fairness of the process; individuals "may not be used in certain ways by others
as means or tools or instruments or resources" (Nozick 1974, pp. 333–334) just
because of the feasibility of a Pareto improvement.
Nor would an entitlement theory of justice deem HE to be a necessary or a
sufficient component of a general principle of procedural fairness. In fact, the
formation of Nozick’s minimal state will produce HI if state-of-nature equals be-
come unequal in welfare in the minimal state. This can arise whenever the benefits
of the protection of the state are distributed unevenly, due for instance to hetero-
geneity in initial conditions. That should not prevent the formation of the minimal
state. And given that any explicit redistributive scheme is unjust, the principle of
HE would seem to be far too weak to uphold the minimal state view. For entitle-
ment theories of the state, the HE principle may at best only provide an external
constraint to limit explicit redistributive schemes, without HE itself featuring in
the objective function of the state.

3.2.3 Entitlements, anonymity and mobility

Entitlement theories of justice do not impose anonymity in making social welfare
judgements, unlike the Rawlsian theory of Section 2.1 and standard measures of

13
inequality and social welfare which are unaffected by re-orderings of incomes.
End-result principles are unaffected by this kind of churning, although the indi-
viduals involved in such re-orderings may not be so indifferent to them.
The recent literature indeed provides a number of attempts at making dis-
tributive judgements less anonymous and more concerned with redistributive pro-
cesses. One such example is found in the literature on the "pro-poorness of
growth". Imposing distributive anonymity makes it impossible to take into ac-
count mobility in welfare. Grimm (2005) argues that because investigations of
whether growth is pro-poor should check whether it was beneficial to the ini-
tially poor, "postulating anonymity, when assessing pro-poor growth, can lead to
misleading conclusions." In addressing the same issue, Glewwe and Dang (2006)
argues for instance that one should "compare the poorest 20% in 1992-93 with
the same households in 1997-98, some of whom are no longer among the poorest
20% of the population". This, they argue, is better than comparing quintiles of
anonymous and different individuals across years because it forces analysts to be
more concerned with redistributive processes — this removal of the anonymity
axiom is clearly analogous to what HE also demands.
A similar issue arises in the context of assessing the impact of reforms. Take
for instance Chen and Ravallion (2004), which studies the welfare impacts of the
changes caused by China’s accession to the World Trade Organization and reports
a significant variance in "local" impacts across households at a given income level
— with rural families tending to lose, and urban households tending to gain. An
analogous result is found in Ravallion and Lokshin (2004) where the increased
Moroccan consumption inequality generated by trade reform is entirely attributed
to the reform’s impact on "horizontal inequality". This raises inter alia the issue
of the feasibility and acceptability of reforms:

"The pro-globalization side has tended to focus on aggregate mea-

sures of inequality or poverty, while the anti-globalization side has
pointed to the losers amongst the poor and those vulnerable to poverty
(...). Extreme horizontal inequalities raise concerns about social and
political stability; the protests from the losers can be loud, even when
the aggregate net gains are positive." (Ravallion 2004)

3.2.4 HE and the Pareto principle

A possible objection to the HE principle is that the usual forms of utilitarianism
justify the unequal treatment of equals, and that HE is furthermore inconsistent

14
 Table 1: Two hypothetical distributions: A to B, with reranking and HE
Movement individual 1 individual 2 individual 3 individual 4
from A 10 10 15 15
to B 10 10 15 16

with the Pareto principle. This is well argued by Kaplow (2000)11 :

"When one carefully examines the concept of HE and what its pursuit
entails, one discovers (...) [that] it conflicts with the basic foundations
of welfare economics. HE stands in opposition to the advancement of
human welfare. Indeed consistent pursuit of HE can conflict with the
Pareto principle." (p.1)

Consider for instance distributions A and B in Table 1, with four individuals

each. The movement from distribution A to distribution B will be deemed Pareto
improving by most observers, but it clearly involves HI, and hence may not be
deemed desirable by HI-concerned analysts.
One way to circumvent the above Paretian line of argument against HE is
to adopt an entitlement stand, such as in King (1983), where Kaplow’s above
implication is seen as a flaw of strict utilitarianism since it ignores the fairness
of the redistributive process. Recall, however, that Nozick’s entitlement theory of
justice does not generate an independent ethical basis for HE.
Another avenue is to question the usefulness and/or the validity of the Pareto
principle. Despite its wide acceptance, the Pareto principle has indeed no empiri-
cal power since no distributive changes effectively leave no one worse off in any
large population. It must therefore be strengthened by adding in other principles
that will inevitably sometimes clash with it. Even on purely theoretical bases us-
ing small populations, the experimental evidence is typically critical of the Pareto
principle. For instance, Beckman, Formby, Smith, and Zheng (2002) report that

"envy and malice take on important roles in decisions involving

Pareto improvements. (...) [Our results] support Mui’s (1995) obser-
vation that envy and malice may represent major obstacles to market
reform in transition economies. (...) [F]ailure to create support runs
11
See also Kaplow (1989, 1995) as well as Stiglitz (1982): "Indeed, there are potentially impor-
tant economic situations where Pareto optimality and horizontal equity are inconsistent (in both
an ex ante and ex post sense)." (p. 29)

15
Table 2: VE and HE: ’Would you favor the status quo A or a movement from A
to B?’

Distributions Favor A Favor B A'B

(Pareto) (Non Pareto) Indifferent
A = (10, 50, 100, 200) 19/33
2/33
B = (10, 50, 100, 150) 12/33

Distributions Favor A Favor B A'B

(HE-Pareto) (Non HE-Pareto) Indifferent
A = (10, 50, 100, 200) 26/33
5/33
B = (200, 100, 50, 10) 2/33

the risk of broad opposition from a large segment of the population,

opposition that may politically block Pareto improvements." (p. 366)

One may of course make a case that behind a veil of ignorance, envy may
not (or should not) be a relevant factor; but, once entitlements are known, envy
clearly emerges as an issue and HE can then legitimately conflict with the Pareto
principle. Note that the occurrence of such a conflict depends inter alia on the
dissemination and availability of inter-personal information, availability which is
presumably larger now than before in most modern societies.
I have also asked 33 randomly chosen students in my Fall 2005 Introductory
Macroeconomics course their opinion on the matter. The question I put to them
was:

"A country consists of four individuals that are identical in every re-
spect other than their incomes. They have incomes initially given by
A = (10, 50, 100, 200). A tax/transfer policy is being considered for
implementation next year. Please state whether you would prefer the
status quo by circling A or the outcome under the tax/transfer policy
by circling B."

The results appear on Table 2. The upper panel of the Table indicates that slightly
more than one third (12 out of 33) of the students did not abide by the Pareto
principle. The lower panel of Table 2 suggests the existence of a concern for

16
HE among these students — confronted with an admittedly extreme case of HI,
since the movement from A to B involves a complete re-ordering of the individual
incomes. A large majority (26 out of 33) indeed favor the status quo, presumably
because of entitlement, procedural, positional or non-anonymity concerns. Had
anonymity been the sole principle used by the students, we would have expected
most of them to declare themselves indifferent between A and B.

3.2.5 HE and the veil of ignorance

An important question then is whether Rawls’ theory of justice can provide an
ethical basis for HE. Although this is not explicitly stated in Rawls’ work, one
could presume that HE should be considered as a fairness principle only if does
not conflict with Rawls’ own two principles of justice. HE could then (at best)
only be ranked lexicographically after Rawls’ two fundamental principles of jus-
tice. Indeed, in the usual understanding of Rawls’ "original position", people have
neither rights, nor entitlements nor status quo positions, and therefore HI would
appear to make little sense. In Nozick’s words,

"no historical principle, it seems, could be agreed to in the first in-

stance by the participants in Rawls’ original position. For people
meeting together behind a veil of ignorance to decide who gets what,
knowing nothing about special entitlements people may have, will
treat anything to be distributed as manna from heaven." (Nozick 1974,
p. 199)

To derive a foundation for HE using Rawls’ original position could, however,

be done by enriching further his approach to consider both absolute and relative
outcomes as determinants of well-being. In such a modified original position,
members of the society would in particular be mindful of the role of relative local
outcomes in the determination of well-being. These relative local outcomes are
generated at some common level of initial entitlements. Members of the society
would ponder both the distribution of absolute vertical outcomes and that of rela-
tive horizontal outcomes because the latter outcomes can affect well-being just as
importantly as the former ones. Individuals behind a veil of ignorance would then
be asked to decide on an optimal complete distribution of outcomes, which would
be complete both vertically and horizontally.
Given this view of well-being — i.e., that subjective well-being is at least
partly determined by the distribution of relative horizontal outcomes — one would

17
then use Rawls’ reasoning to contend that the Rawlsian maxi-min rule should ap-
ply to the distribution of both absolute and relative positional deprivation. Indi-
viduals behind a veil of ignorance would then agree to a third principle of justice,
that local equals be treated equally. Given that well-being is jointly determined
by absolute and relative considerations, this third principle — the HE principle
— would naturally compete with the traditional interpretation of Rawls’ general
conception of justice (see page 4) — a VE principle. It would neither replace it
nor be secondary to it. The HE principle would be particularly relevant in modern
social environments and for advanced conceptions of justice, for which relative
positions in local income distributions and absence of discrimination can claim
significant and increasing importance both in terms of utilitarian well-being and
ethical salience.
Figure 2 illustrates how this extension of the maxi-min rule would affect policy
analysis. The northeast quadrant shows the distribution of income before entitle-
ments have been distributed — everyone is bunched inside the black circle "a".
The northwest quadrant indicates the effect of a bimodal distribution of initial en-
titlements: after the allocation of talents, initial wealth, social environments, and
chance, half the population is bunched at "b" and the other half, more fortunate,
at "c". At each level of such vertical entitlements, policy generates the horizontal
distribution displayed in the southwest quadrant. A behind-the-veil-of-ignorance
observer would in the usual Rawlsian context focus on the set α of individuals,
those are absolutely the worst off in terms of outcomes. An objective observer
that also cared about horizontal discrimination and relative outcomes at a given
vertical level of entitlements would also be concerned with the extended β set of
individuals in the southeast quadrant. The β set incorporates the two absolutely
worst off individuals in vector "e" as well as the two relatively worst off in vec-
tors "d" and "e" — "d" and "e" being represented as "f" and "g" in the southeast
quadrant.
A "modern" view of well-being would thus expand the Rawlsian set from α
of β. This then raises the issue of which relative weight to give to one versus the
other set of individuals. There is clearly a trade-off here between absolute and
relative outcomes, and between vertical and horizontal equity. Violations of HE
will often be inevitable, although still regrettable, such as when some forms of be-
havior ought to be encouraged for economic efficiency or for VE reasons. Hence,
while both VE and HE simultaneously enter into play in any arbitrage between
competing government policies, it follows that most of the government’s optimal
policy choices will create a certain degree of horizontal inequity, though this will
be less than if the HE principle did not appear independently in the government’s

18
objective function.

3.3 Who are the equals?

Assuming that we then define HE as requiring that local equals be treated equally,
a natural question is certainly: "who should those local equals be?". One of the
key issues in the design of tax policy is indeed that of what ethical criteria may be
used to distinguish between individuals. To quote Atkinson and Stiglitz (1980):

"The implementation of this [HE] principle raises several issues. (...)

The spirit of the principle can be illustrated by examples where agree-
ment is clear; e.g., taxes should not be discriminatory according to
hair colour or religion." (Atkinson and Stiglitz, 1980, p. 353).

A first qualification would seem to be that the HE principle must apply over ethi-
cally equal individuals, since the HE principle is at its core a principle to be used
for ethical purposes. "Ethically equal" would also seem to imply "having the same
level of well-being", since as seen above it can be ethically justified for govern-
ments to distinguish vertically between poorer and richer individuals. The HE
principle then becomes: Two individuals who are ethically equal (and whose ini-
tial levels of well-being are thus the same) should also be treated equally by the
state.
The next qualification concerns the dimensions along which it would be ethi-
cally justified to distinguish individuals. Consider the following examples involv-
ing two individuals, A and B:

E1: A imposes a cost on society (e.g., is a smoker), B does not (e.g., is a non-
smoker): is a cigarette tax horizontally equitable?

E2: A likes to take risk, B does not: is a lower tax on capital income than on
other sources of income horizontally equitable?

E3: A lives in Nova Scotia, B lives in Manitoba: is a clause that favors citizens
from Nova Scotia (e.g., an exemption of oil revenues in a federal equaliza-
tion formula) horizontally equitable?

E4: A lives in Canada, B in Ethiopia; are residence-based social assistance pro-

grammes horizontally equitable?

19
Examples E1 and E2 raise the issue of whether we want to confuse well-being and
behavior in an assessment of HE: my view is that we should not. Using a HE cri-
terion to assess tax policy involves focussing on the impact’s policy on well-being
— is the smoker better off than the non-smoker? Using an efficiency criterion
to assess tax policy focusses primarily on behavioral impacts — not correcting
externalities may lead to excessive smoking, or encouraging investment may lead
to a socially more efficient level of growth and innovation. The two HE and ef-
ficiency criteria are separate, and policy choice will usually weight the two, but
they should not be confused.
Examples E3 and E4 provide examples of constraints put on the application of
the HE criterion. The constraints usually take the form of various discriminatory
frontiers erected artificially across the domain of who can be considered equals.
For instance, although Roman law in Antiquity laid the foundations for some of
the principles of equality of treatment that still underlie modern legal principles,
that law did discriminate severely against slaves. Only a few generations ago, after
a bill to abolish the slave trade was introduced in 1787 in the British Parliament,
Sir Rose Price, a baronet, argued that slavery "was God’s will for black men".12
Various other forms of discrimination by gender, age, race, language, religion,
and ethnicity continue to prevail nowadays in our world. Perhaps the most harmful
form of current discrimination is that based on geography (E3) or citizenship (E4).
Future generations will possibly judge severely the way in which artificial political
frontiers are currently hampering human solidarity.
To be sure, consensuses are continuously evolving on what criteria should be
used to distinguish ethically between individuals13 . An example of this comes
from the Canadian Charter of rights and freedoms:
"Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right
to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrim-
ination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, na-
tional or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical
disability." 14
An interesting example of how removal of geographical barriers can extend
the HE principle is found in the recent plea of McGill University’s Principal, Mrs.
Munroe-Blum, to put an end to an "inequitable" system of exemption of foreign
12
Quoted in http://www.headleypark.bristol.sch.uk/slavery/beyond/endofslavery.htm
13
See for instance Osberg and Smeeding (2006) for cross-country comparisons of attitudes to-
wards income differentials.
14
Article 15.1, Canadian Charter of rights and freedoms, Part I of 1982 Constitution Act.

20
fees for university students. This system restricts such exemptions only to a select
and apparently randomly chosen forty countries, such as Mexico, Vietnam, Korea,
Italy and Peru. These substantial exemptions benefit only 38,4 % of Quebec’s
foreign students:
"In modern Quebec which opens large its door to the international
community, why should we arbitrarily dictate that students from a
few countries should pay nothing more than Canadians, whereas, for
the remainder of planet, they should pay much more?" (Le Devoir, 22
April 2006, p. a1)
Another important example is the removal of temporal frontiers for the appli-
cability of the HE principle. This is usually what is meant by "intergenerational
equity" — two individuals equal except for the generation to which they belong
should be treated equally by the state. Failure to enforce this can indeed lead to
feelings of temporal discrimination and unfairness:

"I admit it: I belong to generation X, the 25–40 year olds, (...) they
had the bad luck of following the baby boomers. The government
has nothing concrete to offer them: They have to pay to fix thousands
of kilometres of crumbling roads, to rebuild schools that are falling
apart, to restore insalubrious hospitals, to honour entrenched terms of
compensation to bureaucrats. They will have to pay double to have
decent healthcare services." (Martine Rioux, "Je suis une X," Car-
refour de Québec, 2004)

3.4 Equality of treatment — in what dimensions?

The VE and HE principles are generally applied to the monetary dimension of
the government’s impact. Material welfare being, however, only one of the di-
mensions well-being, they should also be applied to dimensions other than simply
income. Considering these other dimensions may, in fact, be decisive in compar-
isons of the benefits and drawbacks associated with various government policies15 .
Dimensions which are closely associated to Rawls’ primary goods and Sen’s ca-
pabilities include:
15
Feldstein (1976) hinted to this three decades ago in the context of VE: the social welfare
"function could be defined with several different equality variables for different types of consump-
tion. Recent discussion of the distribution of health care and education suggest the importance of
such measures of ’categorical equity’" (p. 84).

21
 1. formal freedoms;

2. capacity to escape from material poverty;

3. capacity to participate in social and public life;

4. capacity to achieve self-respect, peace and security;

5. freedom of choice of production, consumption and lifestyle.

In such a multidimensional context, HE could thus be further refined as requiring

that individuals who are ethically equal in each dimension of well-being should
also be treated equally by the state in each of these dimensions. This, of course,
raises several issues, of which one of the most difficult is certainly how to measure
these multiple dimensions of well-being.
One recent example of HI in a non-monetary dimension of well-being con-
cerned the capability of Iraqis living in Canada to exercise their political right to
vote in the 2005 Iraqi elections:

"Beginning Monday, Iraqis across Canada will register to vote in their

native country’s first election since former dictator Saddam Hussein
was ousted two years ago. But (...) [t]here are only five voting sta-
tions for the country’s estimated 25,000 eligible Iraqi voters - three
in Toronto, one in Ottawa and one in Calgary. (...) Voters must also
register in person, meaning two separate trips to the polls. ’It is not
a perfect operation by any means and Canada in particular obviously
has large issues with geography,’ said Ian Smith, head of the Canadian
branch of the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) out-
of-country voting program." (The Canadian Press National News,
January 16, 2005)

Protection against fraud thus seems to have motivated an electoral process that
was inequitable to those Iraqis living outside three Canadian cities.
Another example is discrimination in the dimension of the ability to achieve
security:

"Individuals and firms affected by torrential rains in Estrie, Mauricie,

and the Outaouais were subject to different criteria than those in the
Saguenay, Charlevoix and Côte-Nord regions.

22
 A family having suffered damages of $50,000 or $100,000 to prop-
erty in La Baie has been harmed no more than another having incurred
similar damages in La Patrie or Aylmer. Why does the latter not have
a right to an equivalent amount of compensation? Is this not a ques-
tion of equity? (...) The government must be fair to all, that’s the
least that can be expected. " (Gilles Lesage, "Équité pour les sinistrés
— Gare aux privilèges dans l’aide gouvernementale," Le Devoir, 16
August 1996, p. A8)

A more tragic example involves Christian Royer, whose son Nicolas disappeared
in Peru and could not be found despite a $180,000 search involving two rescue
teams. Royer had held hope that the Canadian government would cooperate and/or
reimburse some of the expenses incurred in the search for his son:

"If Nicolas had been lost in the Rockies, the government would have
participated in the search, so I don’t understand why they refuse sim-
ply because he was lost in Peru. He’s still a Canadian citizen."(Le
Devoir, 14 December 2004, p. A8.)

Both instances show geographically-based HI in the dimension of the capacity to

achieve security, the first, within Canadian borders, and the second, outside them.

4 HI in practice
This last section discusses three major sources of HI and presents examples of
how they arise in practice.

4.1 HI in control over resources

The first most common source of HI comes from discrimination in control over re-
sources, exerted arbitrarily and/or randomly across individual socio-demographic
characteristics. The immediate causes may be informational problems, adminis-
trative errors, incomplete take-up, tax evasion, randomness in the effect of pro-
grams and policies, or outright or implicit discriminatory behavior by the govern-
ment.
To see how this introduces HI, consider Figure 3. It is similar to Figure 1 with
quadrants liking the northeast space of resources to the southwest space of capa-
bilities and functionings. The northeast quadrant shows two budget constraints.

23
The first, denoted by Y1 and Y2, is the pre-intervention budget constraint of both
individuals 1 and 2. The two individuals also have the same transformation curves,
T CA and T CB , and thus face initially the same capability constraints, S1 and S2.
But the government discriminates against 2, and his budget and capability con-
straints thus move to Y2’ and S2’ respectively.

4.1.1 Open discrimination

Such instances of discrimination are common in societies with weak public gov-
ernance, as illustrated by Narayan and Petesch (2002):

"Despite official rules that make discrimination illegal, behavior by

state, market, and civic institutions reflects prejudice against poor
people, women, and excluded social groups. (...) In several places
people said that service providers first look at their face, name, or ad-
dress and then decide whether they deserve any attention." (pp. 479–
480)

Recent studies also suggest that inter-regional and intra-regional allocations of

funds are often biased by more or less official political and socio-demographic
discrimination. In China for instance, Park, Wang, and Wu (2002)

"find that political factors have influenced the selection of poor coun-
tries. (...) Initial designations favored minority and revolutionary base
areas, were not equitable across provinces, and were affected by lob-
bying efforts" (p. 125).

Jalan and Ravallion (1998) also report that in the late 1980’s about half of the poor
in four Southern provinces did not live in the regions officially designated poor by
the Chinese government.

4.1.2 Affirmative action

Affirmative action is another example of open discrimination. Consider for in-
stance the following criticism of Antonio Villaraigosa’s (mayor of Los Angeles)
"posturing" support for affirmative action:

"In a state as gloriously miscegenated as California, doling out uni-

versity places and building contracts according to varieties of skin
is dangerous. It is far better to target help on the basis of people’s

24
 income (something which, in places like Los Angeles, would mean
helping Latinos anyway)." (The Economist, May 21st, 2005 p. 15–
16)

However disguised, affirmative action is thus a clear source of HI. Despite of

this, and despite of clause 15.1 (quoted on page 20) on "equality before and under
law and equal protection and benefit of law", the Canadian Charter of rights and
freedoms does allow for such HI-producing affirmative action programs:

"Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that
has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged in-
dividuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of
race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or
physical disability." 16

Other sources of resource-discrimination HI can be more subtle. Imperfect tar-

geting is one. Take for instance the case of differentiated indirect taxation (such
as foodstuff subsidization) and socio-demographic targeting schemes (such as in-
come support schemes based on observable socio-demographic characteristics).
Using Tunisian data, Bibi and Duclos (forthcoming) find that although differenti-
ated indirect taxation may generate less vertical redistribution, it could be prefer-
able to socio-demographic targeting since it leads to far less HI.

4.1.3 Decentralisation
Decentralisation has arguably many advantages, but one of its costs is certainly
to be a frequent source of HI. One example that will be of interest to Canadian
academics is decentralised pay scales:

"The study ’Salary and salary scales of full-time teaching staff at

Canadian universities, 2003/04’ (Statistics Canada) sheds light on the
relatively inferior terms of employment of professors at Quebec uni-
versities relative to those of their colleagues in the rest of Canada.
While mean salaries of a full professor outside of Quebec hover above
the $100,000 mark, nearly half of the 12 institutions referred to in this
study did not attain that limit." (Marie-Andrée Chouinard, "L’équité
16
Article 15.2, Canadian Charter of rights and freedoms, Part I of 1982 Constitution Act.

25
 salariale n’est pas acquise chez les universitaires," Le Devoir , 4 July
2005, p. A1)17

Unless either prices or academic productivity are higher in the rest of Canada than
in Quebec, such provincially decentralised salary scales presumably generate HI.
Decentralisation also raises the issue of whether citizens should have a "right"
to the same services, wherever they live:

"We need to establish a national consensus in order to ensure that

the territory of Quebec remains occupied in its entirety. Citizens are
equal, regardless of where they live, and they have the right to the
same services." (Michel Belzil, president of the Fédération québé-
coise des municipalités, Le Devoir, 8 May 2004, p. H6)

This argument can of course be made at any government level, local, regional,
provincial, or national. It is reminiscent of the equalisation debate in Canada,
and, more particularly, of the existence of a so-called vertical fiscal imbalance
between the federal and provincial governments. As politically sensitive as this
issue currently seems to be, it is easily settled when one realises that

"In order to say that there is a ’structural’ economic problem relating

to fiscal imbalance, it must be argued that one of the levels of gov-
ernment does not have access to the revenues required to fulfill its
obligations. (...) The mere existence of deficits at one level of gov-
ernment does not indicate the existence of such a structural imbalance
nor does it mean that such deficits have to be rectified at the expense
of another level of government. (The Economic Council of Canada,
quoted in Ontario’s 1982 budget and in Department of Finance, Gov-
ernment of Canada, http://www.fin.gc.ca/purl/fiscbal-e.html)
17
The same reference suggests that more "local" comparison are even more discomforting for
academics at Université Laval:
"In Quebec, the École des hautes études commerciales is in the lead, with a mean
salary of nearly $116,000 for a full professor, followed by McGill at $112,000,
Polytechnique ($106,000), Concordia ($104,000), Institut national de la recherche
scientifique ($101,400), Université de Montréal ($101,000), École de technologie
supérieure ($100,000) and Université du Québec à Montréal ($100,000).
Below the $100,000 mark for this category of professor, we find Université du
Québec en Outaouais ($99,000), Université de Sherbrooke ($97,700), Université
Laval ($93,000), (...)".

26
Since both the federal and the provincial governments have full access to all of
the major sources of revenue, they therefore dispose of all of the fiscal latitude
that they need to fulfill their respective responsibilities and to the extent that they
desire. This certainly invalidates the concept of a vertical fiscal imbalance in
Canada.
Be that as it may, a horizontal imbalance in fiscal capacity certainly exists be-
tween provinces — an imbalance that justifies compensating transfers from the
federal government to the provinces in an equalisation framework and (to a lesser
extent) in the form of equal per capita transfers (often nominally for specific ex-
penses such as health care and education). In the absence of such transfers, there
would be HI between Canadians, since heterogeneity in provincial fiscal capacity
would create divergences in the capacity of provinces to provide a similar level of
services at a similar tax burden.

4.2 Heterogeneity in needs

The second common source of HI is that public policy often does not sufficiently
allow for differences in "needs" and, more broadly, in "transformation curves" in
defining policy parameters. To see this, consider Figure 4 with again four quad-
rants liking a northeast space of resources to a southwest space of capabilities
and functionings. Note here that individuals 1 and 2 differ initially in two ways,
first by their initial budget constraints Y1 and Y2, second by their transformation
curves, T CA1 and T CA2 . These differences net out in terms of capabilities, and 1’s
and 2’s initial capability frontiers are equal at S1 and S2. The government may,
however, fail to notice this equality if it fails to observe the differences in needs
captured by the difference in the functions that transform resources into capabil-
ities. So, motivated by the differences in resources, it can be tempted to treat 1
differently from 2 and bring 1’s budget constraint to Y1’. That would break the
equality of the two individuals in the capability space and would therefore lead to
HI.
One of the most important examples of this is the failure of family income
taxation to take into account the presence of children. For the last decade or so,
middle and high income Canadians have indeed been facing the same income tax
structure regardless of the child-raising costs that they face. Instead of the univer-
sal child tax credit once available to all families, the federal income tax system
now provides child tax benefits only to lower income families. The rationale for
this has been to target resources to more "deserving" families. Such a failure to
account for the presence of children obviously introduces HI across tax units with

27
different child raising responsibilities; because of its welfare-assessment imper-
fections, it also hampers the ability of the tax system to exert VE.
To illustrate why, we have used 2003 family market incomes (the mtinc27
variable, denoted as X below) from Statistics Canada’s Survey of Labour and
Income Dynamics to simulate how a tax system that takes into account the costs
of children differ from one that does not. A basic personal amount equal to A is
fixed along with a "full equivalence scale" of EN = (1 + 0.7(NA − 1) + 0.5NC )
and a partial (adult-only) equivalence scale equal of EA = 1+ 0.7(NA − 1), where
NA is the number of adults and NC is the number of children in the family. Two
taxes are then compared:

TN : a HE tax equal to tN (X − EN A) with marginal tax rate tN = 0.5 and basic

personal amount A set to the 2006 federal level of $9039;

TA : a HI tax system equal to tA (X − EA A∗ ) with marginal tax rate tA also equal

to 0.5 and basic personal amount A∗ set such that the total tax revenue from
TN equals that from TA .

The results are shown in Figure 5 in the form of differences between TA /EN
and TN /EN at different levels of X/EN (adult-equivalent income). The scatter
plot shows that TA introduces significant variability of taxes at the same family
welfare level. Moreover, and perhaps more surprisingly, TA appears to produce
less VE than TN for the same marginal tax rate and overall tax revenue. This is
because the tax basis for TA is a noisy measure of true welfare, and this makes it
more difficult for TA to redistribute welfare vertically. Relatively to TN , TA thus
appears to fail both vertically and horizontally.
This can be made more precise by resorting to a decomposition of total redis-
tribution into vertical and horizontal components suggested by Atkinson (1979)
and Pfahler (1987) and shown in Table 318 . The decomposition expresses the
difference between the Gini index of pre-tax (GX ) and post-tax (GN ) adult equiv-
alent incomes as the difference between an index of vertical equity (V ) and an
index of horizontal inequity (R, for reranking), both of which being function of
Gini and concentration indices for pre-tax and post-tax incomes. As expected, not
18
Decompositions of redistribution into VE and "classical" HI along the lines of Duclos and
Lambert (2000) and Duclos, Jalbert, and Araar (2003) give essentially the same results. Very
similar results are also obtained when the tax system TA is one that uses a different marginal tax
rate but for the same basic personal amount and total tax revenue as TN , as well as a TA system that
uses a different total tax revenue but with the same marginal tax rate and basic personal amount as
TN . More details are available from the author upon request.

28
 Table 3: Equity and equality with and without child tax allowances
Gini-based indices expressed in %; pre-tax Gini=45.46

Post-tax Gini Redistribution VE index HI index

Tax system
GN GX − GN V R
HE tax system 31.37 14.09 14.09 0
Adult allowance only 32.22 13.24 13.53 0.27

only does the HE tax system produce no reranking and no HI, but it also leads to
greater VE and therefore also to more redistribution.

4.3 Heterogeneity in preferences

The last source of HI arises when public policy uses preferences to discriminate
among individuals. When the impact of the redistributive process depends on
production and consumption preferences, two individuals with the same initial
set of opportunities can be treated differently by the State. Such discrimination
will generate HI in the passage from resources/capabilities to functionings. In the
words of Feldstein (1976),

"Why should an individual who receives interest on municipal bonds

pay less tax than an individual with equal income who receives his
interest on a bank deposit? Why should homeowners be allowed de-
ductions for housing expenses when renters are denied those oppor-
tunities?" (p. 87)

This effect is illustrated on Figure 6, where individuals 1 and 2 face initially

the same resource and capability frontiers Y and S but end up choosing different
vectors of commodities α1 and α2 because they have different preferences U1 and
U2. The introduction of a tax on commodity A moves the budget and capability
constraints to Y’ and S’ for both individuals. But because of his preferences, indi-
vidual 1 is more penalised than individual 2 and sees his level of functionings β1
pushed in further inside his initial capability set than 2’s. The tax thus "preference-
discriminates" the movement from initial capabilities to final functionings. Most
judgements of well-being would conclude that 1 is more penalized than 2 by such
a tax and that it therefore introduces HI.

29
4.3.1 Freedom to choose
One objection to the above line of reasoning is: "Why does individual 1 not adjust
his preferences in line to those of 2? That would move him to 2’s choice and
would eliminate HI." Or, in the context of Feldstein’s above example, "why do
depositors and renters simply not change their behavior to take advantage of the
government’s tax distorsions?" To accept this objection would, however, trample
on an important dimension of well-being, which is that of freedom to choose.
This is illustrated on Figure 7, where "freedom to choose" appears on the hori-
zontal axis and "distance of functionings from initial capability set" appears on the
vertical one. If both 1 and 2 opt to maximise their utility and thus to follow freely
their preferences, individual 1 is drawn farther from his initial capability frontier.
At the other extreme, both individuals could move back to that initial frontier by
refraining to consume any of commodity A on Figure 6 and thus by sacrificing
completely their freedom to choose. That sacrifice would nevertheless be more
costly for individual 1. Indeed, the two lines of Figure 7 show that individual 1 is
more penalized than 2 whatever level of freedom of choice he selects.
To expect individuals simply to disregard their preferences in order to adjust
to some government’s discriminatory practice seems indeed to downplay the im-
portance of freedom of choice as an important dimension of well-being. In Sen’s
words,
"the ’good life’ is partly a life of genuine choice, and not one in which
the person is forced into a particular life — however rich it might be
in other respects." (Sen 1985b, pp.69–70)
The same view is also shared by Nozick (1974):
"The minimal state treats us (...) with respect by respecting our rights,
it allows us, individually or with whom we choose, to choose our life
and to realize our ends and our conceptions of ourselves." (pp. 333–
334)
To be treated "with respect" and to lead a "good life" thus requires that we not
be forced into lifestyle choices that are against our "conceptions of ourselves".

4.3.2 Negative income tax schemes

An example of the role that the dimension of freedom to choose can play in policy
analysis is the desirability of negative income tax (NIT) schemes. As is well-
known, these schemes do not necessarily generate more VE than other possibly

30
more discriminatory and coercitive income support schemes. But NIT schemes
are generally more vertically and horizontally equitable in terms of freedoms to
choose one lifestyle, including labour supply, savings, family composition and
human capital investment decisions.
Figures 8 and 9 illustrate the impact of the introduction of such a NIT in Que-
bec using simulation results detailed in Araar, Duclos, and Blais (2005). The
current distribution of effective marginal tax rates (combining personal income
tax rates, social insurance contributions, and rates of withdrawal of various trans-
fers as market income increases) is shown on Figure 8. Although Araar, Duclos,
and Blais (2005) find that a revenue-neutral "flat-tax" NIT would not decrease
significantly income poverty and inequality, Figure 9 shows that it would clearly
equalise marginal tax rates both vertically and horizontally, and would therefore
be beneficial in terms of equity in the dimension of the freedom to choose one’s
lifestyle.

4.3.3 Child care subsidies

Our last example of HI draws from Quebec’s current policy of extensive child care
subsidies which, in the words of a member of the province’s National Assembly,
is

"a formidable tool of equity, of equal opportunity for our children.(...)

We built on solid values, (...) which have made us understand that
individual equity, equity between individuals is at the base of the eco-
nomic and social development of the community." (Camil Bouchard,
M.N.A. for Vachon, Journal des débats, Assemblée nationale du
Québec, 31 May 2005)

Let us subject this statement to a "reality check". This can be done using a useful
and recent M.A. thesis at UQÀM. Grenier (2005) imputes the value of Quebec’s
child care subsidies across quartiles of disposable income and across types of
child care parental choices and child care facilities (institution-based, home-based,
etc.). Some of the results are shown in Table 3. Unsurprisingly perhaps, not only
is the probability of benefitting from a subsidy increasing with incomes, but so
is the expected value of the subsidy. Moreover, at a any given quartile, there is a
significant degree of horizontal variability in the benefit received, depending on
parental choice and type of child care. The child care subsidy system thus fails
both in terms of vertical and horizontal equity in the income support dimension.

31
Table 4: Probabilities (%) of child care use conditional on quartiles and types of
care, children 0 to 4 years old, 2002; value of subsidy across different types of
care in parentheses

Quartiles of Institution Home-based Other No child care Total

disposable income ($ 6180) ($3672) ($0) ($0)
1st quartile 20.85 5.42 16.28 57.45 100%
2nd quartile 32.68 13.66 17.35 36.31 100%
3rd quartile 40.34 14.26 20.25 25.15 100%
4th quartile 41.41 15.97 27.03 15.59 100%

Furthermore, and as discussed above, such a preference-based subsidy system

also fails in the dimension of freedom to choose. It first penalises horizontally
the freedom of choice of those families that would otherwise prefer those child
care arrangements that are not subsidized by the state. Since those families have
on average a lower level of disposable income, that freedom-to-choose penalty is
also on average larger for those with lower well-being in the income dimension.
Hence, extending the consideration of well-being to other dimensions reinforces
the conclusion that Quebec’s current child care subsidy is both vertically and hor-
izontally inequitable in the income dimension. Interestingly, this issue was raised
in the last federal election campaign:
"Choice in child care. We will give all parents $100 per month
per child under age 6 to spend on child care needs as they
choose — whether that means formal day care, a babysitter,
neighbourhood child care, or helping one parent stay at home."
("Stand up for Canada: the Conservative Party’s election platform,"
www.conservative.ca)
Note that such a more egalitarian policy alternative is also advocated by one of
Quebec’s political parties:
"Diversify the provision of daycare services in order to respect par-
ents’ freedom of choice and respond to their needs, while maintaining
the $5 per day program, by directly distributing the subsidy, which
currently goes to the daycare centres, to the parents as a daycare

32
 coupon. Consequently, parents will use this coupon to purchase day-
care services they will have chosen according to their own needs."
(Action démocratique du Québec 2002)

5 Conclusion
This paper has enquired into some of the possible bases for the popular, though
relatively unexplored, principle of horizontal equity. It has also categorised and
illustrated some of the more important empirical sources of horizontal inequity.
The most important messages of the paper are probably

• that the combination of relative well-being effects and of a Rawlsian-type

veil of ignorance can provide a justification for a search for HE;
• that HE can and should often be applied to dimensions of well-being other
than income;
• and that incorporating HE can influence important aspects of policy analy-
sis.

This being said, the end feeling appears to be somewhat of a stalemate be-
tween efficiency, vertical equity, and horizontal equity criteria. In this inconclu-
sive result, however, we are in good company. First, that of a prominent welfare
economist:
"Even when we care about horizontal inequity we would presumably
want to balance that concern against other policy objectives, such as
reducing absolute poverty." (Ravallion 2004)
Second, that of the President of the National Bureau of Economic Research:
"The process of tax design must therefore balance the achievement of
horizontal equity against other desirable features of a tax structure."
(Feldstein 1976, p. 89)
And third, that of a recent Nobel Prize laureate:
"Virtually any tax system will have some degree of horizontal in-
equity; one needs, then, to trade off horizontal equity with other
desiderata of a good tax system. One needs, then, a meta-principle
for evaluating tax systems."(Stiglitz 1982, p. 28)

33
 Far from clearing up a debate, it is therefore to be feared that this paper has
instead stirred up a number of unresolvable issues. In this again, however, I find
solace in the words of others, which are also my last words:

"I believe that there is also a place and a function in our ongoing
intellectual life for a less complete work, containing unfinished pre-
sentations, conjectures, open questions and problems (...).
There is room for words on subjects other than last words." (Nozick
1974, p. xii)

34
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 Figure 1: Resources, capabilities and functionings

TC A A

α
U1
Y1

39
FA B

S1

FB TC B
 Figure 2: HE and entitlements

Behind the veil

c b a

40
Entitlements Behind the veil
Entitlements α Relative local outcomes
β

g
e
f
d Absolute outcomes
 Figure 3: The effect of targeting

TC A A
Y2’

Y1,Y2

41
FA B

S2’

S1,S2

FB TC B
 Figure 4: Differences in transformation curves

1
TC A A
Y1’

2
TC A

42
Y1

FA B
S1’ Y2

S1,S2

FB TC B
 Figure 5: HE vs HI tax system — same overall tax revenue, same marginal tax rate, but different tax allowance for
children and adults

3000 2000

43
0 1000
HI tax minus HE tax (per adult equivalent)
−1000
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000
Market income per adult equivalent
 Figure 6: Discrimination by preferences

TC A
A

Y α1
U1

Y’ α2

44
U2

FA S’ B
β1

β2
S

FB TC B
 Figure 7: Well-being and freedom of choice

45
Distance of functionings
2

from initial capability set (S)

Max closeness Max U(A,B) Freedom
to S of choice
 Figure 8: Marginal tax rates in Québec

1.00
0.90
0.80
0.70

46
0.60
0.50
0.40

Marginal tax rates

0.30
0.20
0.10
0.00
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 90000 10000
0
Market income
 Figure 9: Marginal tax rates in Québec under a Basic income scheme with a flat tax

0.70

0.60

0.50

47
0.40

0.30

Marginal tax rates

0.20

0.10

0.00
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 90000 100000
Market income