Concave generalized utilitarianism and well-being comparability

Abstract The paper investigates generalized utilitarian social orderings based on sums of concavely transformed individual well-being levels. It offers a unified analysis of these orderings in a framework based on a single profile of utility functions. The paper discusses approaches to specify the utility profile and distinguishes different types of generalized utilitarian orderings. It provides characterizations of concave generalized utilitarian orderings with equity, weak separability, and compensation conditions. Existing and new compensation properties are closely related to continuity. The paper in turn examines two attempts to justify utilitarianism. The first one employs a substantive invariance requirement on social evaluation. The second one is based on a new stability condition and neither needs anonymity nor separability assumptions.