Abstract:What part of the inequality observed in a particular country is due to unequal opportunities, rather than to differences in individual efforts or luck? This paper estimates a lower bound for the opportunity share of inequality in labor earnings, household income per capita and household consumption per capita in six Latin American countries. Following John Roemer, we associate inequality of opportunity with outcome differences that can be accounted for by morally irrelevant pre-determined circumstances, such as race, gender, place of birth and family background. Thus defined, unequal opportunities account for between 24% and 50% of inequality in consumption expenditure in our sample. Brazil and Central America are more opportunity-unequal than Colombia, Ecuador, or Peru. "Opportunity profiles", which identify the social groups with the most limited opportunity sets, are shown to be distinct from poverty profiles: ethnic origin and the geography of birth are markedly more important as determinants of opportunity deprivation than of outcome poverty, particularly in Brazil, Guatemala and Peru.♦ Development Research Group, The World Bank. We are grateful to

Abstract:What part of the inequality observed in a particular country is due to unequal opportunities, rather than to differences in individual efforts or luck? This paper estimates a lower bound for the opportunity share of inequality in labor earnings, household income per capita and household consumption per capita in six Latin American countries. Following John Roemer, we associate inequality of opportunity with outcome differences that can be accounted for by morally irrelevant pre-determined circumstances, such as race, gender, place of birth and family background. Thus defined, unequal opportunities account for between 24% and 50% of inequality in consumption expenditure in our sample. Brazil and Central America are more opportunity-unequal than Colombia, Ecuador, or Peru. "Opportunity profiles", which identify the social groups with the most limited opportunity sets, are shown to be distinct from poverty profiles: ethnic origin and the geography of birth are markedly more important as determinants of opportunity deprivation than of outcome poverty, particularly in Brazil, Guatemala and Peru.♦ Development Research Group, The World Bank. We are grateful to

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT

International audienceWe examine the long-term effects on individual economic outcomes of a set of earthquakes – numerous, large, but mostly not extreme – that occurred in rural Indonesia since 1985. Using longitudinal individual-level data from large-scale household surveys, together with precise measures of local ground tremors obtained from a US Geological Survey database, we identify the effects of earthquakes, exploiting the quasi-random spatial and temporal nature of their distribution. Affected individuals experience short-term economic losses but recover in the medium run (after 2–5 years), and even exhibit income and welfare gains in the long term (6–12 years). The stocks of productive assets, notably in farms, get reconstituted and public infrastructures are improved, seemingly partly through external aid, allowing productivity to recover. These findings tend to discount the presence of poverty traps and exhibit the potential long-term benefits from well-designed post-disaster interventions in contexts where disasters primarily affect physical assets

The measurement of inequality of opportunity has hitherto not been attempted in a number of countries because of data limitations. This paper proposes two alternative approaches to circumventing the missing data problems in countries where a demographic and health survey (DHS) and an ancillary household expenditure survey are available. One method relies only on the DHS, and constructs a wealth index as a measure of economic advantage. The alternative method imputes consumption from the ancillary survey into the DHS. In both cases, we compute a lower bound estimator of the share of (ex-ante) inequality of opportunity in total inequality. Parametric and non-parametric estimates are calculated for each method, and the parametric approach is shown to yield preferable lower-bound measures. In an application to the sample of ever-married women aged 30-49 in Turkey, inequality of opportunity accounts for at least 26% (31%) of overall inequality in imputed consumption (the wealth index).

Using information on asset ownership, housing quality, and access to services to construct an indicator of household wealth, we estimate the share of inequality among prime-age Turkish women that can be attributed to unequal opportunities. Both parametric and non-parametric estimation methods are used, and robustness to some sample redefinitions is verified. We find that at least one-third (one-fourth) of overall wealth (imputed consumption) inequality in Turkey is associated with morally irrelevant, predetermined circumstances. The circumstances that account for the largest share of the variance are rural/urban birth area and father's education. Controlling for rural birth, parents' education, language spoken at home, and number of siblings, a three-way regional breakdown of birthplace is not an important predictor of wealth. An opportunity deprivation profile reveals that more than two thirds of the most deprived group in Turkey consists of women born in the rural areas of the Eastern region, from mothers with no formal education.

Investment in land administration projects is often considered key for agricultural productivity and rural development in developing countries. But the evidence on the effect of such interventions is remarkably mixed. This article reviews the literature and discusses a number of challenges related to the analysis of the impacts of land administration programs, focusing on developing countries where the starting position is one of land administration systems based on the Napoleonic code, with existing individual rights that may be imperfect and insecure. We examine a set of conceptual and methodological challenges including: 1. a conceptual challenge related to the need to unbundle property rights and to establish the plausible causal chain for land administration interventions; 2. the existence of other binding constraints on productivity, implying the need to consider heterogeneities in policy impacts and the complementarity between property rights and other productive interventions; 3. the need to account for spillover effects of land interventions on non-targeted households; and 4. methodological challenges related to the causal identification of the impacts of such interventions.