Unequal Opportunities and Human Capital Formation

Daniel Mejia and Marc St-Pierre

Borradores de Economia from Banco de la Republica de Colombia

Abstract: This paper develops a tractable, heterogeneous agents general equilibrium model where individuals have different endowments of the factors that complement the schooling process. The paper explores the relationship between inequality of opportunities, inequality of outcomes, and aggregate efficiency in human capital formation. Using numerical solutions we study how the endogenous variables of the model respond to two different interventions in the distribution of opportunities: a meanpreserving spread and a change in the support. The results suggest that a higher degree of inequality of opportunities is associated with lower average level of human capital, a lower fraction of individuals investing in human capital, higher inequality in the distribution of human capital, and higher wage inequality. In particular, the model does not predict a trade-off between aggregate efficiency in human capital formation (as measured by the average level of human capital in the economy) and equality of opportunity.

Keywords: Human Capital; Inequality; Equity-Efficiency Trade-off. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D33 J24 J31 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-dge, nep-edu, nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.32468/be.415 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Unequal opportunities and human capital formation (2008)
Working Paper: Unequal Opportunities and Human Capital Formation (2006)
Working Paper: Unequal Opportunities and Human Capital Formation (2005)
Working Paper: Unequal opportunities and human capital formation (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdr:borrec:415

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Borradores de Economia from Banco de la Republica de Colombia Cra 7 # 14-78. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Clorith Angélica Bahos Olivera ().