Equity and Equality of Outcome

Equity and equality of outcome are too often conflated on both the right and the left. They represent fundamentally different principles.

I have written about this matter before (see Equity and Social Justice: Rationalizing Unjust Enrichment; Decoding Progressive Newspeak: Equity and the Doctrine of Inclusion; Sacrificing Equity Upon the Altar of Inclusivity; The Disaster Politics of Equity) but it bears repeating.

Equity is about fairness—ensuring individuals have access to the opportunities and resources they need to succeed based on their specific circumstances. It acknowledges that people start from different places and seeks to level the playing field through targeted support.

Equity recognizes that individuals and groups face different structural and biological realities, and thus need differential support to achieve fair opportunities—not necessarily the same outcomes.

For example, people with disabilities may require assistive technologies, flexible work arrangements, or modified environments to participate fully in education or employment.

Similarly, sex classes—biological differences between females and males—can shape different experiences, for example in athletics. Equity respects these differences by tailoring policy and support to context, rather than insisting that men and women must end up in the same activities and roles.

This depends on working from a standpoint to objectively determine law and policy. A man declaring himself a woman is insufficient groups to allow him to participate in women’s sports.

Equality of outcome, in contrast, flattens these complexities and misrepresents fairness as sameness.

Fairness lies in recognizing and responding to real differences where they matter and where they do not compromise the liberties and rights of others.

Freedom depends on allowing individuals to make something of themselves—and suffer the consequences of not striving.

Equality of outcome seeks to guarantee the same results for everyone regardless of effort, which can overlook personal agency, ambition, or talent.

Equity preserves the integrity of individual differences while addressing group differences or systemic barriers, whereas equality of outcome imposed uniformity in results at the expense of fairness and freedom.

If you want to see what equality of outcome might look like you will find useful Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 “Harrison Bergeron.” It’s fiction, to be sure, but plausible.

I assign this essay in my class Freedom and Social Control. For those who have busy lives, I will briefly summarize the story here.

The context is a dystopian future where the US government has amended the Constitution to ensure that everyone is equal in every conceivable way—not just in opportunities or rights, but in beauty, intelligence, strength, and talent.

To achieve this, the government uses “handicaps” to suppress any advantage: intelligent people wear ear devices that disrupt their thoughts, strong people carry weights to weaken them, and beautiful people wear masks to hide their desirable features.

These arrangements are policed by the vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

The protagonist, Harrison Bergeron, is a gifted and rebellious young man who tears off his handicaps in an act of defiance, only to be executed on live television.

The story illustrates the authoritarianism that results from pursuing equality of outcome at all costs. Enforced uniformity crushes excellence, freedom, and individuality. Far from promoting justice, radical egalitarianism is tyranny.

Harrison Bergeron is not an attack on equity, but a warning: when equality of outcome replaces equality of opportunity, the result is not justice, but tyranny disguised as fairness.