Q.Compare Robbins' 'scarcity' definition of Economics with Marshall's 'welfare' definition. Why is Robbins' definition considered broader in scope?

Marshall's definition ties Economics to material welfare alone; Robbins' definition covers any situation of scarce means and unlimited ends, material or not.

Marshall confined Economics to the study of wealth as it contributes to human material welfare, excluding non-material aspects of well-being. Robbins removed this restriction, defining Economics purely in terms of scarce means and unlimited ends — applicable even to non-material choices, such as how a person allocates sc …

Alfred Marshall defined Economics as 'a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life,' concerned with the acquisition and use of wealth so far as it contributes to human WELFARE. Marshall's definition was an improvement on the earlier 'wealth' definitions of classical economists such as Adam Smith, because it placed human welfare, not wealth for its own sake, at the centre of the subject. However, Marshall's definition still confined Economics to the MATERIAL aspects of welfare — the goods and services that can be bought and sold — leaving out non-material sources of well-being and any economic choice that does not directly involve 'wealth' in the ordinary sense.

Lionel Robbins, in 1932, proposed a definition free of this restriction: Economics is 'the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.' Robbins' definition does not mention wealth or material welfare at all — it applies to ANY situation in which unlimited ends (wants) confront scarce means (resources) that could be used in more than one way. This makes Robbins' definition considerably BROADER in scope than Marshall's: it applies just as well to a student deciding how to allocate a fixed, scarce number of study hours among several subjects, or to a government deciding how to allocate scarce foreign exchange reserves among di …

Students sometimes wrongly claim Robbins' definition is 'narrower' because it sounds more technical or abstract than Marshall's — in fact its abstractness is exactly what makes it apply to a WIDER range of s …