What is a welfare function?

Question

What is a Welfare Function?

can some one please explain to me in simple terms (and easy to understand) what a welfare function is, as i am supposed to write about it and i don't know what it means.

btw i am talking about the public sector here and saying that one of their aims and objectives is a welfare function....... but i don't know what it means lol!

Answer 1

Social welfare function

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In economics a social welfare function can be defined as a real-valued function that ranks conceivable social states (alternative complete descriptions of the society) from lowest on up as to welfare of the society. Inputs of the function include any variables considered to affect welfare of the society (Sen, 1970, p. 33). In using welfare measures of persons in the society as inputs, the social welfare function is individualistic in form. One use of a social welfare function is to represent prospective patterns of collective choice as to alternative social states. The social welfare function is analogous to an indifference-curve map for an individual, except that the social welfare function is a mapping of individual preferences or judgments of everyone in the society as to collective choices, which apply to all, whatever individual preferences are. One point of a social welfare function is to determine how close the analogy is to an ordinal utility function for an individual with at least minimal restrictions suggested by welfare economics. Kenneth Arrow proved a more basic point for a set of seemingly reasonable conditions.

Answer 2

In economics a social welfare function can be defined as a real-valued function that ranks conceivable social states (alternative complete descriptions of the society) from lowest on up as to welfare of the society. Inputs of the function include any variables considered to affect welfare of the society (Sen, 1970, p. 33). In using welfare measures of persons in the society as inputs, the social welfare function is individualistic in form. One use of a social welfare function is to represent prospective patterns of collective choice as to alternative social states. The social welfare function is analogous to an indifference-curve map for an individual, except that the social welfare function is a mapping of individual preferences or judgments of everyone in the society as to collective choices, which apply to all, whatever individual preferences are. One point of a social welfare function is to determine how close the analogy is to an ordinal utility function for an individual with at least minimal restrictions suggested by welfare economics. Kenneth Arrow proved a more basic point for a set of seemingly reasonable conditions.

Answer 3

social programs in a nutshell.