Measuring social justice in the light of effectiveness of public distributive policy

Purpose Our paper stems from the basis of the fundamental principles of equity theory and other justice theories. It suggests integral index of social justice that includes two partial indices: observance of fundamental rights and distribution of socio-economic achievements. Design/methodology/approach – We employ the index method based on normalization of partial indices according to their impact on overall social justice. For computing the integral index of social justice (ISJ) we select countries with obvious links between economic outcomes and efficiency of social sphere regulation (16 EU Member States). We use the data from Global Competitiveness Report which are the most appropriate to components of partial indices. Findings – We assessed the level of social justice basing on the case study of the EU Member States which demonstrate the most obvious relationship of economic efficiency and quality of social sphere regulation. The research confirmed that the economic leadership of the countries has a close connection with social justice in the respective society. At the same time, targeting and ensuring the effectiveness of the state distribution policy in terms of availability of socio-economic benefits beyond the minimum social guarantees is still inferior to efforts aimed at creating an infrastructure for social support of the population and guarantees of fundamental rights and freedoms. Originality/value – We suggest a unique method that allows to identify the reserves of the state distributive mechanisms' improvement and to analyse the links of social justice of the living environment and doing business with the economic successes of the states. Our approach to determining the weighting factors and the composition of the indicators according to the social justice categories can be specified depending on the research objectives.