Having enough and not having too much: A characterization of sufficientarianism–limitarianism

Sufficientarianism, a prominent framework in distributive justice, asserts that everyone should have enough resources to meet a minimum threshold. Limitarianism, by contrast, holds that no individual should possess more than a specified upper limit of income or wealth. While the latter has gained attention in political philosophy and policy debates, it remains largely unexplored in formal normative economics. This paper bridges this gap by offering an axiomatic characterization of a social welfare criterion that integrates sufficientarian and limitarian principles. We formalize these dual commitments and investigate their implications for resource allocation. The analysis sheds light on the theoretical underpinnings of this hybrid approach and its potential relevance for normative analysis. • We propose a social welfare criterion combining sufficientarianism and limitarianism. • We provide a full axiomatic characterization of sufficientarianism–limitarianism. • A single novel axiom differentiates our criterion from headcount sufficientarianism.