Valuation of Functioning Bundles and Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-Being

This chapter discusses the issues of evaluating an individual’s well-being in different situations as well as of interpersonal comparisons of individual well-being, where an individual’s well-being is determined solely by the individual’s achieved functioning bundle. It is shown that, if the evaluator of individual well-being wants to accommodate in the evaluation the differences in the values of individuals, even minimally, then the evaluation cannot satisfy some very weak criteria for interpersonal well-being comparisons. This chapter also discusses the possibility of avoiding this impasse by considering a weaker criterion for interpersonal comparisons of well-being.