Noun
- rare derisive The belief in or support of the welfare state.
Derived terms
Welfarism is a form of consequentialism. Like
all forms of consequentialism, welfarism is based on the premise
that actions, policies, and/or rules should be evaluated on the
basis of their consequences. Welfarism is the view that the morally
significant consequences are impacts on human welfare. There are
many different understandings of human welfare, but the term
"welfarism" is usually associated with the economic conception of
welfare. Economists usually think of individual welfare in terms of
utility
functions. Social welfare can be conceived as an aggregation of
individual utilities or utility functions. Welfarism can be
contrasted to other consequentialist theories, such as classical
utilitarianism,
which takes utility among agents as directly accessible and
measurable.
Welfarist views have been especially influential
in the law and
economics movement. Steven Shavell and Louis Kaplow have argued
in an influential book, Fairness versus Welfare that welfare should
be the exclusive criteria by which legal analysts evaluate legal
policy choices.
Bibliography
Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell, Fairness versus Welfare (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 2002) ISBN 0-674-00622-4..See also
welfarism in Chinese: 福利主義