Who Else Wants an Equal Society?

Why We Should All Care about Equality

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Everyone has a different idea of what equality means. Does equality mean everyone gets the same thing, or does it mean everyone could get that thing? Does equality mean everyone could get a particular thing, or does it mean everyone gets what they should? While equality can have many different meanings, I think most of us care about equality in some sense (whether or not we agree with each of the sentiments in the picture above). What we tend to disagree about is what type of equality matters.

The following examples may help illustrate why equality in some sense matters to so many of us.

Imagine you are a parent in charge of distributing a pizza to children. Virtually all equitable (here meaning fair or just) ways to distribute the pizza would fall under some definition of equality:

1. We could give each child the same number of pizza slices. If there are ten kids and ten slices, each child would get a slice. This would be an example of equality of outcome because each child would get the same outcome — one slice.
2. We could use a lottery system. Each child gets a lottery ticket and has an equal chance of winning the pizza. If there are ten children, each child has a 1/10 chance of winning the pizza. This would be an example of equality of opportunity because each child is given an equal opportunity/chance to win the pizza.
3. We could give kids pizza based on some form of merit. We could track how many books kids read in the last week and divide the pizza into as many slices as there were books. We could then give each kid one slice of pizza for each book they read. A child that read five books would receive five slices. A child that read two books would get two slices. Each slice would be equal in size to every other slice.

This last example might not seem like equality, but it is in at least one sense. We might call it equality of the ratio of books to slices, or more generally equality of the ratio of merit to reward. In this case, the ratio of books to slices for every child would be exactly one. Each child would get as many pizza slices as the number of books they read.

We might also argue this is another — although different — example of equality of opportunity. Assuming the absence of factors which would prevent children from reading despite them wanting to (admittedly a difficult assumption to make), each child would have an equal opportunity to read books and get pizza.

Notice that each of these three examples could be seen as different kinds of equality. I believe many people would see at least one of these examples as being equitable. This is not accidental. Ways of allocating goods only have the potential to be equitable because they are in some sense equal.

This becomes clearer if we contrast the examples above with examples that are in no sense equal (and not equitable either):

1. Imagine we were to give all the pizza to the oldest child. This would not be equal under any of the definitions discussed. Only one child has the opportunity to receive pizza (not equal opportunity) and only one child actually receives pizza (not equal outcome). There is also no merit involved (not equal ratio of merit to reward). Accordingly, it does not seem equitable to distribute pizza this way.
2. We might distribute pizza equally but only among kids born in the spring. Only kids born in the spring would have the opportunity to receive pizza (not equal opportunity) and only these same kids would actually receive it (not equal outcome). Again, there is no merit involved (not equal ratio of merit to reward). For all of these reasons, this does not seem like an equitable way of distributing pizza.
3. We might give a slice of pizza to each kid who answers a math question correctly and has brown hair. Here there is merit involved (answering math questions correctly) although not every student has an equal opportunity to receive pizza (only kids with brown hair are rewarded). As such, some children will not receive pizza. There will not be an equal ratio of math questions answered to pizza received since any kid without brown hair who answers correctly will receive no pizza.

I hope these examples help make the connection between equality and equity clearer. If I am correct, there is no equity without equality of some sort. Given this, we should not use these terms as direct opposites. While not all equalities are equitable, all equities are in some sense equal.