Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Despite a recent surge in the number of studies attempting to measure inequality of opportunity in various countries, methodological differences have so far prevented meaningful international comparisons. This paper presents a comparison of ex-ante measures of inequality of economic opportunity (IEO) across 41 countries, and of the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) for 39 countries. It also examines international correlations between these indices and output per capita, income inequality, and intergenerational mobility. The analysis finds evidence of a "Kuznets curve" for inequality of opportunity, and finds that the IEO index is positively correlated with overall income inequality, and negatively with measures of intergenerational mobility, both in incomes and in years of schooling. The HOI is highly correlated with the Human Development Index, and its internal measure of inequality of opportunity yields very different country rankings from the IEO measure. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SJEL Classification: D71, D91, I32Keywords: equality of opportunity, income inequality, social mobility, mobility NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYMany different indices to measure inequality of opportunity have been proposed, but only two have been applied to enough countries to permit reasonably meaningful international comparisons. The inequality of economic opportunity index (IEO) estimates the (lower bound) share of income inequality that can be attributed to differences in people's pre-determined circumstances (such as race, gender and family background). It has been applied to 41 countries, and ranges from 2% in Norway to 34% in Guatemala. The second approach is known as the Human Opportunity Index (HOI): an index of children's access to basic services, penalized by unequal opportunities in that access. Like the IEO, the HOI must lie between 0 and 100%. In the 39 countries where it has been computed, it ranges from 10% in Niger to 91% in Chile. The IEO is positively correlated with income inequality, and negatively with intergenerational mobility -both in incomes and in years of schooling. The HOI is highly correlated with the Human Development Index. Its internal measure of inequality of opportunity -the dissimilarity index -yields very different country rankings from the IEO, highlighting the differences between the two methods. The IEO and the HOI may well be complementary, but users should be cautious to understand what each...

Despite a recent surge in the number of studies attempting to measure inequality of opportunity in various countries, methodological differences have so far prevented meaningful international comparisons. This paper presents a comparison of ex-ante measures of inequality of economic opportunity (IEO) across 41 countries, and of the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) for 39 countries. It also examines international correlations between these indices and output per capita, income inequality, and intergenerational mobility. The analysis finds evidence of a "Kuznets curve" for inequality of opportunity, and finds that the IEO index is positively correlated with overall income inequality, and negatively with measures of intergenerational mobility, both in incomes and in years of schooling. The HOI is highly correlated with the Human Development Index, and its internal measure of inequality of opportunity yields very different country rankings from the IEO measure

We show that, when measuring inequality of opportunity with survey data, scholars face two types of biases. A well-known downward-bias, due to partial observability of circumstances that affect individual outcome, and an upward bias, which is the consequence of sampling variance. The magnitude of the latter distortion depends on both the empirical strategy used and the observed sample. We suggest that, although usually neglected in empirical contributions, the upward bias may be significant. We propose a simple criterion to select the best specification which balances between the two sources of bias. Our method is based on cross validation and can be easily implemented to survey data. In order to show how this method can improve our understanding of the inequality of opportunity measurement, we provide an empirical illustration based on income data of 26 European countries. Our evidence shows that estimates of inequality of opportunity are extremely sensitive to model selection. Alternative specifications lead to significant differences in the absolute level of inequality of opportunity and to a number of substantial countries' re-ranking. This in turn clarifies the need of an objective criterion to select the best econometric model when measuring inequality of opportunity.

We propose a set of new methods to estimate inequality of opportunity based on conditional inference regression trees. In particular, we illustrate how these methods represent a substantial improvement over existing empirical approaches to measure inequality of opportunity. First, they minimize the risk of arbitrary and ad-hoc model selection. Second, they provide a standardized way of trading off upward and downward biases in inequality of opportunity estimations. Finally, regression trees can be graphically represented; their structure is immediate to read and easy to understand. This will make the measurement of inequality of opportunity more easily comprehensible to a large audience. These advantages are illustrated by an empirical application based on the 2011 wave of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions.

In this paper, we argue that a better understanding of the relationship between inequality and economic growth can be obtained by shifting the analysis from the space of final achievements to the space of opportunities. To this end, we introduce a formal framework based on the concept of the Opportunity Growth Incidence Curve. This framework can be used to evaluate the income dynamics of specific groups of the population and to infer the role of growth in the evolution of inequality of opportunity over time. We show the relevance of the introduced framework by providing two empirical analyses, one for Italy and the other for Brazil. These analyses show the distributional impact of the recent growth experienced by Brazil and the recent crisis suffered by Italy from both the income inequality and opportunity inequality perspectives. JEL codes: D63, E24, O15, O40 In recent years, a central topic in the economic development literature has been the measurement of the distributive impact of growth (see Ferreira 2010). This literature has provided analytical tools to identify and quantify the effect of growth on distributional phenomena such as income poverty and income inequality. Indices for measuring the pro-poorness of growth have been proposed, 2 and the Growth Incidence Curve (GIC), measuring the quantile-specific rate of economic growth in a given period of time (Ravallion and Chen 2003; Son 2004), has become a standard tool in evaluating growth from a distributional viewpoint. The interplay among growth, inequality, and poverty reduction has

In 2001 the Italian tertiary education system embarked in a broad process of reform. The main novelty brought by the reform was a reduction of the length of study to get a first level degree together with the introduction of a 2-years, second level, master degree. This paper aims at studying the effects of the reform in terms of fairness in educational opportunity. In order to do so we first define fairness criteria following a well developed responsibility sensitive egalitarian literature, we then discuss existing inequality of opportunity measures consistent with these criteria, we show their relationship, and we adapt them to the educational framework. We finally employ this set of measures to show the evolution of fairness in the access to university in Italy before and after the reform.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Does the way scholars measure inequality of opportunity correspond to how people perceive it? To answer this question we must first clarify how scholars define and measure inequality of opportunity, we will then discuss the possible mechanisms linking objective measures and subjective perception of the phenomenon, and finally we test our hypothesis by merging data coming from two sources: the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (2011) and the International Social Survey Programme data (2009). We show that individual perception of unequal opportunity is heterogeneous across countries and among individuals. Moreover, the prevailing perception of the degree of unequal opportunity in a large sample of respondents is only weakly correlated with its objective measure. We estimate a multilevel model considering both individual and country level controls to explain individual perception of unequal opportunity. Our estimates suggest that one of the most adopted measure of inequality of opportunity has no significant role in explaining its perception. Conversely, other country level variables and personal experiences of intergenerational social mobility are important determinants of how inequality of opportunity is perceived.