Social welfare theory is a branch of welfare economics that examines how the well-being of individuals can be evaluated and aggregated to assess the welfare of society as a whole ^[1][2]. It provides conceptual and analytical frameworks for comparing alternative economic and social states, particularly in relation to resource allocation, efficiency, equity, and distributional outcomes ^[3]. Major approaches include Pareto-based criteria, social welfare functions, and social choice theory, which differ in how they incorporate individual preferences, utility, and ethical judgments into collective evaluations ^[4]. These frameworks inform economic policy analysis while highlighting the challenges of comparing individual well-being and reconciling competing social objectives.