MCDA or preference-based social welfare functions?

Preference-based social welfare functions (pbSWF) perform better at reconciling competing personal and social goals than typical forms of MCDA. Its virtues are (a) its respect for people’s own judgments about the relative values of health, wealth, and other broad benefits within their lives (non-paternalism) and (b) its conformity with reasonable ethical axioms. Any discrepancy between an MCDA objective function and that implied by pbSWF suggests the former’s failure to respect non-paternalism and reasonable ethical principles. The pbSWF approach is implementable using micro-econometric evidence on personal preferences over health, wealth, and other broad benefits; and surveys of the general population or their representatives to ascertain the social acceptability of certain ethical axioms and the degree of inequality aversion.