What does fairness mean to New Zealanders?
Koi Tū is working in partnership with the New Zealand Institute for Economic Research (NZIER) and the New Zealand Treasury to better understand what New Zealanders think about fairness.
About the project
The research follows an approach from Koi Tū and NZIER. The project consists of two phases:
Phase 1 took place from December 2023 to April 2024, and involved a stated-preference survey using a representative sample to develop an initial understanding of what fairness means to New Zealanders.
Phase 2 (this phase) builds on the survey results using the public conversation forum Pol.is to develop a more nuanced understanding of New Zealand’s perceptions of fairness.
Background to the conversation
How we perceive fairness in Aotearoa New Zealand depends in part on what we mean by fairness.
We treat the term ‘fairness’ as roughly equivalent to ‘equity’ and ‘justice’. We prefer to use the word ‘fairness’ as we consider it the most neutral term. We focus on fairness in relation to how social and economic outcomes (such as income, wealth, quality of life, and access to services and opportunities) are distributed in society, but we recognise that fairness can also relate to how the law is administered or how disputes are resolved.
Below we outline the seven standard conceptions of fairness from political philosophy, as outlined by the Treasury in Te Tai Waiora, the Treasury’s first Wellbeing Report. These conceptions can be difficult to grasp so we developed simplified statements that relate to each concept.
| Conception of fairness | Description |
| Utilitarianism | The goal should be to maximise the total, aggregate amount of wellbeing in society; how this wellbeing is distributed across different people doesn’t matter, except insofar as it impacts on the aggregate amount. |
| Maximin | What matters most is the absolute position of the people who are worst off (and not how badly they are off compared to others). Inequality of things such as income or wealth is only permissible if it is to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, for example, if it increases the amount of economic product that is redistributed to the worst off. |
| Prioritarianism | Inequality of wellbeing itself is not necessarily a problem. What lies behind a concern with unequal wellbeing and economic inequality is an intuition that we ought to give weighted priority to those who are worst off. |
| Sufficientarian |
Inequality of wellbeing itself is not necessarily a problem. What lies behind a concern with unequal wellbeing and economic inequality is a concern with poverty. We need to ensure that each and every person has enough, or sufficient, wellbeing .
|
| Libertarianism |
We should avoid trying to impose a particular distribution of outcomes (including wellbeing outcomes), and instead focus on the process that leads to those outcomes. If the actions and processes that led to a given distribution of wellbeing were fair and just, then the distribution is fair and just.
|
| Luck egalitarianism |
Inequality of wellbeing could be the result of peoples’ choices, or it could be caused by factors beyond their control. It is fair to let people experience the consequences (including impacts on their wellbeing) of their own choices, starting from a place of equal opportunity; but it is not fair or just to let them suffer for things that they could not control.
|
| Relational egalitarianism | What matters, ultimately, is the moral equality of people, and this requires that we can relate to each other as social equals. Inequality of wellbeing and economic inequality is morally problematic when it impacts on people’s ability to live in society as equals. |
About Koi Tū
Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures is an independent, transdisciplinary think tank and research centre at the University of Auckland.
We generate knowledge and analysis to address critical long-term national and global issues challenging our future.
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Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures
The University of Auckland
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