Equality of Opportunity: Theory and Measurement

John Roemer and Alain Trannoy

Journal of Economic Literature, 2016, vol. 54, issue 4, 1288-1332

Abstract: During the last third of the twentieth century, political philosophers actively debated about the content of distributive justice; the ruling ethical view of utilitarianism was challenged by various versions of equality of opportunities. Economists formulated several ways of modeling these ideas, focusing upon how individuals are placed with respect to opportunities for achieving various outcomes, and what compensation is due to individuals with truncated opportunities. After presenting a review of the main philosophical ideas (section 2), we turn to economic models (sections 3 and 4). We propose a reformulation of the definition of economic development, replacing the utilitarian measure of GDP per capita with a measure of the degree to which opportunities for income acquisition in a nation have been equalized. Finally, we discuss issues that the econometrician faces in measuring inequality of opportunity, briefly review the empirical literature (section 6), and conclude (section 7).

JEL-codes: C43 D63 D70 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: DOI: 10.1257/jel.20151206
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (126)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20151206 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... -Ajr41aRCRxtjoSlmnRQ (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Equality of Opportunity: Theory and Measurement (2016)
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:aea:jeclit:v:54:y:2016:i:4:p:1288-1332

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Literature is currently edited by Steven Durlauf

More articles in Journal of Economic Literature from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().