Inequality of opportunity for income in five countries of Africa

Cogneau, Denis; Mesplé-Somps, Sandrine

doi:10.1016/s1049-2585(08)16005-7

Cited by 63 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 17 publications

(19 reference statements)

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“…The table highlights a number of problems for comparability across these studies. First is the nature of the advantage variable (y) itself: whereas , Pistolesi (2009), Singh (2011 and Belhaj-Hassine use labor earnings, Ferreira andPiraino (2012) use incomes, Cogneau andMesple-Somps (2008) use consumption, and use imputed consumption. And the definitions of earnings and incomes are not exactly the same across each of these papers either.…”

Section: Ex-ante Inequality Of Opportunity In 41 Countriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality of Opportunity, Income Inequality, and Economic Mobility: Some International Comparisons

Brunori¹,

Ferreira²,

Peragine³

2013

Getting Development Right

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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...

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Section: Ex-ante Inequality Of Opportunity In 41 Countriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality of Opportunity, Income Inequality, and Economic Mobility: Some International Comparisons

Brunori¹,

Ferreira²,

Peragine³

2013

Getting Development Right

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“…4 See for instance Peragine (2004), Roemer et al (2003), Checci et al (2008), Bourguignon et al (2007), Lefranc et al (2008), Lefranc et al (2009), Ferreira andGignoux (2008), Cogneau and Mesplé-Somps (2008), Peragine and Serlenga (2008), Aaberge et al (2010), among others.…”

Section: Key Concepts: Basic Opportunities Circumstances and The Equmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Progress Toward Basic Opportunities for All

Barros¹,

Vega²,

Saavedra³

2010

Brazilian Review of Econometrics

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Universal access to basic opportunities is undoubtedly a central objective of development. In this study, we propose an alternative scalar measure. In addition to being sensitive to the number of available opportunities, this new measure is also concerned with how these opportunities are allocated, and is therefore known as an equity sensitive coverage rate. The proposed measure is increasing in the overall coverage rate and decreasing in deviations from the ideal of equal opportunity. It is obtained by deducting a penalty equal to the deviation from the ideal of equal opportunity from the overall coverage rate. We show that this equity sensitive measure has several suitable properties. In particular, we demonstrate that it is consistent with both first-and second-order stochastic dominance. As a consequence, this measure is Pareto-consistent and sensitive to improvements in the allocation of the available opportunities. According to this index, any increase in the number of opportunities that also leads to an increase in the average coverage rate among the most vulnerable groups would always represent a progress towards opportunities for all. In addition, we propose an estimation procedure for the index and its variance.

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“…Working in a sector or another does not appear to have a significant impact on earnings 9 . Indeed for half of the regions, not even one coefficient is significantly different from zero.…”

Section: Insert Figure 1 Herementioning

confidence: 86%

“…These two measures of inequality of opportunity have been conducted in many developed (Italy [7] , Belgium [14], France [20,21], Norway [1] US [26] among others), and developing countries (for instance in Brazil [6], Latin America [15], India [23] , Africa [9]). In France, inequality of opportunity has been recently studied for income and for health [21,18,13] with the ex-ante approach.…”

Section: Research Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%