Reflections on Mobility and Social Justice, Economic Efficiency, and Individual Responsibility

Abstract This chapter shows that widely held views concerning the desirability of social mobility and equality of opportunity cannot be derived from, and are sometimes inconsistent with, standard specifications of social welfare functions commonly used by economists. For instance, with a utilitarian social welfare function of the standard form with full separability in utilities between generations, and full separability in consumption over time by each individual, then (in steady state) all matrices generating the same probability distribution of income generate the same level of social welfare. The chapter applies the insights to the consideration of inheritance taxation.