54 5.2 – EQUITY
EQUITY
Distributive policies, those that distribute such goods or services as wealth, education, or health care, should be designed with fair and reasonable outcomes as the ultimate goal. Stone (2002) uses a cake as an example to illustrate the difficulties associated with achieving truly equitable polices. In her metaphor, Stone offers her students chocolate cake. However, we’ll imagine that on one afternoon a southern favorite, the key lime pie, appears in a public policy class at the local university. Everyone in class likes key lime pie, and, at first, the class agrees that the most equitable way to serve the pie would be to divide it into equal slices and distribute those slices to each person in class. Inevitably, students begin to object to the equal distribution of the pie. One student concludes that because she did not have breakfast that morning and is extremely hungry, she deserves a larger slice of the pie. Another student notes that he has two children and will need a large enough slice to share with them. Still another student, who is nontraditional, notes that he is the oldest in the classroom and suggests they divide slices according to age, with older students receiving a larger slice. At that point, the instructor points out that she has more years of formal education and deserves a larger slice of the pie. The instructor also mentions that, before class, she and five students contributed money to the “pie” fund. Once enough money was collected, two other students drove to the bakery to buy the pie and bring it back to class. The other ten students in the class did not use any of their own money to purchase the pie, nor did they expend any effort to retrieve the pie from the bakery. Surely, the students and instructor who either bought the pie or delivered it deserve larger slices.
Figure 5.1: Equity plays a central role in current policy debates.
Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Elvert Barnes License: CC BY SA 2.0
This simple pie scenario is a metaphor for understanding the process of designing policy with the explicit goal of providing fair and equitable distribution of a good or service. All students began the class happily agreeing that everyone should have an equal slice, but several quickly challenged that design. Take, for instance, the student who felt that older students should have a larger slice or the instructor who felt that her education entitled her to a larger slice. Both arguments base distribution on rank and merit. The student and instructor expect unequal treatment for people at different ranks; those who are younger or less educated will receive less. Distribution by rank is a central principle that guides how society allocates rewards. We expect to be rewarded upon reaching a higher level through more years of experience or an advanced degree. As Stone notes, “our fundamental belief that rewards such as jobs…and pay should be distributed according to achievement, competence, and other measures of past performance goes hand in hand with a belief in the legitimacy of rank-based distribution” (Stone, 2002).
In a classroom exercise, students work through a scenario requiring they decide who is accepted into a hypothetical law school. Students first learn that less than 3% of the practicing attorneys in the state where the law school is located are African American. Students also receive demographic information about students currently attending the law school: a majority are Caucasian. Students then receive a list of law school applicants. The list includes each applicant’s gender, race, GPA, and LSAT score; minority applicants have slightly lower GPA’s and LSAT scores. The class must then decide who to accept and who to reject. Most classes, with some exceptions, accept the applicants with the highest GPAs and LSAT scores. They justify their choices as being based on merit. This exact argument applies to affirmative action policy, which was conceived as a group-based remedy for violations of merit- and rank-based distribution. Affirmative action raised such questions as, is there a justifiable reason for students from underrepresented groups being accepted? Can universities prove a compelling interest, or should admissions be awarded strictly on merit? On the one hand, supporters of affirmative action point out that minority groups have been denied admissions based on discriminatory practices. Affirmative action policies, therefore, offer ways to ease the racial disparities present at some universities, similar to those present at the hypothetical law school. Opponents argue that affirmative action is a form of reverse discrimination, by which students who may be more qualified are passed over in favor of diversity, resulting in a loss of benefits for majority groups. Returning to the pie example, the students who chipped in to pay for the pie and those who took time out of their day to travel to the bakery illustrate another common equity argument. When designing new distributive programs, policymakers must decide who receives the benefit and how much of the good or service the group receives. Stone (2002) writes that people will agree that distributions are just if the process for acquiring those goods is deemed fair. For many distributive policies, including welfare, health care, and education, the process of determining who receives the benefit is often considered unfair. Opponents commonly argue that they should not have to work hard and pay into a system that gives more significant benefits for unequal effort.
