Extended sympathy in welfare economics refers to interpersonal value judgments of the form that social state x for person A is ranked better than, worse than, or as good as social state y for person B (Arrow, 1963, pp. 114-15). (For example: it would, perhaps, be preferable to lower a wealthy person's income in order to increase a poorer person's income by the same amount.) Here any characteristics that define each person (skills, aptitudes, etc.) are distinguished from the rest of the social state and put on a par with conventional measures of wealth insofar as they affect an extended sympathy judgment.