Burdened societies – or, societies burdened by unfavorable conditions – are societies lacking the necessary means to fulfill the human rights of their citizens. As such, these societies are not well-ordered. The well-ordered members of the Society of Peoples have a duty to assist these burdened societies, providing them the means by which they might become well-ordered themselves. The concept of a burdened society, and the duty of assistance that extends toward them, is at the heart of Rawls’s analysis of international distributive justice.

Two aspects of the concept of a burdened society are worth noting. The first is that the burdens these societies face are not primarily a matter of simple material deprivation. Rawls argues that there are no societies – except, perhaps, the Arctic Eskimos – who do not have enough material resources to form a well-ordered society. The circumstances that prevent a society from being well-ordered, Rawls argues instead, are generally aspects of its social and political culture. In particular, Rawls argues that the causes of a people’s wealth are to be found in its political culture, in the “religious, philosophical and moral traditions that support the basic structure of their political and social institutions,” and in the “industriousness and cooperative talents of its members, all supported by their political virtues” (LP 108).