Welfare Rights
Carl P. Wellman
Are rights to or concerning well being. Primarily, welfare consists in the state or condition of doing or being well; good fortune, happiness, or well being of a person, community, or thing. Hence, primary welfare rights are often called rights to well being. It is useful to classify the various conceptions of rights to welfare roughly on the basis of three distinct concepts of welfare. In the relevant senses, the word ‘‘welfare’’ is used to refer to (1) the happiness or well being of a person, (2) a source of happiness or personal well being, or (3) the organized provision for the basic well being of the needy members of a com munity.
Gregory Vlastos is the most influential advocate of the first conception. He argues that there is a fundamental human right to well being. The content of this right is best described as the well being or welfare of each individual person, that is, the enjoyment of value in all the forms in which it can be experienced by human beings. One person’s right to well being is equal to that of every other person simply because one per son’s well being is as valuable as that of any other’s. From this generic human right to well being Vlastos derives more specific welfare rights, such as the moral rights to education, medical care, or work under decent conditions. At this point his reasoning moves to the second conception of welfare rights best illustrated by the writings of Martin Golding. He contrasts option rights, that involve a limited sovereignty over persons or things, with welfare rights, claims to the goods of life which are conferred by the social ideal of a community. The content of each welfare right is some element in or means to the right holder’s personal good or well being. Examples of the former might be health or freedom from pain; instances of the latter would be food or education. The clearest version of the third sort of conception is Carl Wellman’s definition of a primary welfare right as a right to some welfare benefit or benefits. A welfare bene fit is any form of assistance – monetary payment, good, or service – provided to an individual because of his or her need. Although the most obvious examples are public welfare benefits, such as (in the US context) social security payments or food stamps, there are also private welfare benefits, such as the disaster relief pro vided by the Red Cross or the food and shelter the Salvation Army offers to the homeless.
In order to understand fully the language of welfare rights, one must not only identify the relevant meaning of ‘‘welfare,’’ but also the pre supposed conception of a right. Most discussions of welfare rights interpret them according to Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld’s conception of a claim. Thus, to assert that Jones has a right to adequate medical care is to say that Jones has a claim against some second party to be provided with medical care and that this second party has a duty to Jones to provide such medical care to him or her.
This interpretation poses a conceptual problem when resources are so scarce that adequate medical care is unavailable. Since no individual or government can have any duty to do the impossible, there could be no universal human right to medical care. Joel Feinberg, who adopts a claim theory of rights, suggests that in such cases one is using ‘‘a right’’ in a manifesto sense asserting a potential claim right that ought to determine present aspirations and guide present policies. H. J. McCloskey avoids this predicament by adopting an entitlement theory of rights. Rights are entitlements to do, have, enjoy, or have done, not claims against others. Thus, although a welfare right involves an entitlement to the efforts of others or to make demands on others to aid and promote our seeking after or enjoying some good, the special circumstances will determine who, if anyone, has any implied duty.
Most libertarians conceive of rights negatively as claims that others not interfere with one’s liberty of action or private property (see libertarianism). Although most liberals accept such negative rights, they also assert various positive rights, claims against others to provide one with goods or services (see liberalism). Because welfare rights seem to be positive rather than negative rights, welfare liberals can and usually do affirm their existence, while many libertarians conclude that there is a conceptual incoherence in any attempt to combine the negative concept of a right with the positive concept of an implied duty to provide welfare benefits. James Sterba suggests that there are negative as well as positive welfare rights. Those who lack the resources necessary to satisfy their basic needs have rights that others not interfere with their taking what they need from those who possess more than they basically need. Because welfare rights can be either negative liberty rights or positive claim rights, Sterbadefines them as rights to acquire or to receive those goods and resources necessary for satisfying one’s basic needs.
However one defines ‘‘welfare rights,’’ it is essential to distinguish between the very different species of rights to which this expression can refer. The two most important genera are legal rights conferred by the rules or principles of some legal system and moral rights conferred by moral rules or reasons. Some legal welfare rights, such as the right to education, are in legal systems such as ours civil rights, rights possessed by every member of the society simply as a citizen. Others are special legal rights, rights one possesses by virtue of some more limited status, such as the right to Aid to Families of Dependent Children one possesses by virtue of one’s status as an impoverished parent. The two most basic species of moral rights are human rights, rights one possesses simply as a human being, and civic rights, rights one possesses as a member of some society. Moral philosophers disagree about whether welfare rights, such as the right to social security or the right to an adequate standard of living, belong in the former or the latter category. The significance of this issue is in where the nature of implied duties lies. If these are civic rights, then it is one’s society that has the obligation to provide for these rights; if they are human rights, then presumably other governments and even individual citizens of other nations also bear some responsibility for assisting those in need.
Another distinction that cuts across the previous classification is that between primary and secondary welfare rights. Carl Wellman distinguishes between primary welfare rights to welfare benefits and secondary welfare rights concerning, but not to, welfare benefits. This distinction can and should be generalized to cover all three conceptions of welfare. Examples of secondary welfare rights are the legal right of a recipient of some welfare benefit to a fair hearing before the termination of this benefit and the moral right of a worker that her employee pro vide equal pay for equal work.
Discussions of welfare rights are confusing, in part because the expression ‘‘a welfare right’’ is used with such diverse meanings. Those who wish to think clearly about the political, legal, and moral issues concerning welfare ought not to try to identify the correct, or even the best, conception of welfare rights. Different conceptions are appropriate for different purposes. What is important is to recognize their differences in order to understand more fully the meaning of any given assertion or denial of a welfare right and to think and debate the relevant issues more accurately and fruit fully.
See also rights; welfare economics
Bibliography
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Golding, M. (1968). Towards a theory of human rights. Monist, 52, 521 49.
Hohfeld, W. N. (1919). Fundamental Legal Conceptions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
McCloskey, H. J. (1965). Rights. Philosophical Quarterly, 15, 115 27.
Sterba, J. P. (1981). The welfare rights of distant peoples and future generations. Social Theory and Practice, 7, 99 119.
Vlastos, G. (1962). Justice and equality. In R. Brandt (ed.), Social Justice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall, 31 72.
Wellman, C. (1982). Welfare Rights. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld.
Wellman, C. (1985). Welfare rights. In K. Kipnis and D. Meyers (eds.), Economic Justice. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 229 45.