Mark Glick (University of Utah – College of Social & Behavioral Sciences – Department of Economics; Parsons Behle & Latimer), Gabriel A. Lozada (University of Utah – College of Social & Behavioral Sciences – Department of Economics), & Darren Bush (University of Houston Law Center) have posted The Core Value of Public Policy Should be Equality on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Research in biology and anthropology shows that humans evolved in largely egalitarian small groups; occasional selfishness was punished. Aversion to inequality is thus an inherited human characteristic. In unequal societies, humans experience stress, leading to many social pathologies, as shown by extensive literature in epidemiology. Well-being can be increased by reducing inequality, independent of increases in GDP. This is obscured by current economic theories, which use unrealistic assumptions and an empirically completely unsupported “equity-efficiency tradeoff” to justify ignoring distribution. Finally, we show that public policy can have an enormous impact on income inequality and has done so in the past.