Abstract

I examine end ultimately reject the principle that fault for your own poverty disqualifies you from the receipt of aid which the government would otherwise be under an obligation to provide. I call this principle the disqualification principle. I argue that it has been largely ignored by philosophers partly as a result of skepticism about the extent to which individuals are ever to blame for their own poverty. I contend that such skepticism does not reduce the importance of the disqualification principle, especially insofar as this skepticism rests on extremely controversial doubts about responsibility in general. ;There are two strands of argument for the disqualification principle. The first focuses on the unfairness of providing aid to those at fault. The second focuses on the consequences of providing such aid. I argue against the first strand by showing that although such aid is unfair to those who must provide it, this unfairness is not decisive in determining its appropriateness. I offer clear examples which demonstrate that the unfairness of a duty is not always a decisive consideration against the existence of that duty, extract from these examples the features which override the considerations of unfairness, and show that these features are also present in the case of providing aid to those at fault for their own poverty. The features I identify are the small burden of fulfilling the duty in question, the fact that the beneficiary of the duty does not deserve what would happen to her if the duty were neglected or absent, and the fact that the overall consequences of the duty being fulfilled are better than the consequence of not fulfilling the duty. ;Consideration of this last feature overlaps with consideration of the second strand of argument for the disqualification principle. The proponent of the disqualification principle contends that providing aid to those at fault will produce laziness and dependency. Against this, I argue that aid programs can be designed which avoid these outcomes, and that unrelieved poverty will undermine the self-esteem needed for good citizenship. And finally, I argue that the functional demands of liberal democracy, in conjunction with the demands of uncontroversial principles of equality, dictate that such damage to the possibility of good citizenship be avoided