Equality of What for Children

Abstract

This paper revisits the equality of what-debate and asks whether previous conclusions hold if we analyze the arguments from the perspective of children. It makes three claims. First, that even if welfare cannot be justified as an equalisandum for adults, it remains a reasonable position for the case of children. This claim is argued for by showing that Dworkin’s rejection of equality of welfare relies on an idea of responsible agency that is inappropriate for the case of children. Equality of welfare cannot, by this route, be rejected with regards to children. Second, we owe children welfare rather than opportunity for welfare. Here it is argued that Richard Arneson’s move from equality of welfare to equality of opportunity for relies on the same kind of problematic assumption about responsible agency as Dworkin’s argument for resources. However, the assumption about responsible agency still holds for adults, and for them we need an equalisandum that takes responsibility into account. Moreover, since children will grow up to be adults, they will need preparation for this stage in life. Therefore, both welfare and the appropriate responsibility-sensitive equalisandum will be relevant for children. The third claim is that a general theory of the equalisandum of justice should have a structure like Cohen’s (99:906–944, 1989) equality of access to advantage. Advantage is understood as consisting of both welfare and resources, and access is comprised of both actually having something that is an advantage and having the opportunity to achieve a good.