The debate over what an egalitarian philosophy should seek to equalize — welfare or resources? — was sharpened by a famous pair of articles published in 1981 by Ronald Dworkin. Dworkin’s analysis provoked interest among economists, in part because he used a hypothetical insurance market to determine levels of compensation. This paper examines Dworkin’s position, which captures the resourcist intuition that it is right to compensate individuals who, through no fault of their own, enter society with poor resource endowments.
