Inequality of opportunity, Income inequality, Intergenerational mobility,

We study the difference between the ex post and ex ante perspectives in equality of opportunity. We show that the well documented conflicts between compensation and reward are but an aspect of a broader conflict between ex ante and ex post perspectives. The literature that takes the goal of providing equal opportunities as the guiding principle generally considers that this is implemented only when, ex post, all individuals with the same effort obtain equal success. It is easy to believe that ex ante compensation is another natural embodiment of the same idea. We show that this is not true.

Social exclusion manifests itself in the lack of an individual's access to functionings as compared to other members of society. Thus, the concept is closely related to deprivation. We view deprivation as having two basic determinants: the lack of identification with other members of society and the aggregate alienation experienced by an agent with respect to those with fewer functioning failures. We use an axiomatic approach to characterize classes of deprivation and exclusion measures and apply some of them to EU data for the period from 1994 to 2000. Journal of Economic Literature Classification No.: D63.

No abstract

In this paper, we introduce and apply a general framework for evaluating long-term income distributions according to the Equality of Opportunity principle. Our framework allows for both an exante and an ex-post approach to EOp. Our ex-post approach relies on a permanent income measure defined as the minimum annual expenditure an individual would need in order to be as well off as he could be by undertaking inter-period income transfers. There is long-term ex-post inequality of opportunity if individuals who exert the same effort have different permanent incomes. In comparison, the ex-ante approach focuses on the expected permanent income for individuals with identical circumstances. Hence, the ex-ante approach pays attention to inequalities in expected permanent income between different types of individuals. To demonstrate the empirical relevance of a long-run perspective on EOp, we exploit a unique panel data from Norway on individuals' incomes over their working lifespan.