Equality of Opportunity: A progress report

No 408, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to offer a non-technical selective survey for a general audience about how economists have progressively handled the concept of equality of opportunity. The key idea is that equality of opportunity not only deals with ex-ante inequalities, something that the name already suggests, but also with ex-post inequalities which makes the analysis quite different from that of the capability approach. The article is structured in three parts. First, we review the main theoretical issues about inequality of opportunity. We then follow by looking at the measurement issues and by presenting some empirical results. We finally provide an overview about the challenges faced by policies aiming at enhancing equality of opportunity.

Keywords: Ex-ante inequalities; ex-post inequalities; inequality of opportunity; public policies; compensation; natural reward (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D3 D63 D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2016-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Equality of Opportunity: A progress report (2016)
Working Paper: Equality of Opportunity: A progress report (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2016-408

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