ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2026
What is the general Welfare: Welfare economic perspectives on equity.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Researchers cannot definitely interpret what the framers of the United States Constitution intended when they wrote of the "general Welfare." Nevertheless, researchers can conjecture by specifying social welfare functions that aim to express the preferences of the population. An extensive literature in welfare economics addresses the matter. Nevertheless, economists have often simplified policy analysis by assuming that individuals have homogeneous, consequentialist, and self-centered preferences. Individuals may hold heterogeneous private and distributional preferences. To enhance policy analysis, economists should specify social welfare functions that express the richness and variety of actual personal preferences. The possibilities are vast. I focus on preferences for equity. There has been much controversy regarding interpretation of equity, a term that public discourse has used in vague and conflicting ways. Specifying social welfare functions that formally express different interpretations of equity will not eliminate disagreements, but it should clarify concepts and reduce the inconsistencies that afflict verbal communication.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.