Prospects of Welfare Losses

We have moral reasons not to make individuals worse off than they could have been – moral reasons to prevent welfare losses to individuals. Which reasons do welfare losses provide under conditions of risk? This paper argues for a novel understanding of the prospects of welfare losses: a prospect of welfare losses is worse for an individual not insofar as the individual loses expected welfare but insofar as we expect the individual to lose welfare. While the first understanding is prevailing in the literature, only the second captures the intuitive core of loss-provided reasons and satisfies the condition that welfare losses provide reasons only if there is at least one potential state such that the individual actually loses welfare as a result of one action being chosen rather than another.