On the welfare loss caused by inequality of opportunity

Aitor Calo-Blanco () and J. García-Pérez
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: J. Ignacio García Pérez ()

The Journal of Economic Inequality, 2014, vol. 12, issue 2, 237 pages

Abstract: Based on the ethical principle of equality of opportunity, this paper presents a measure of the welfare loss that is caused by an unfair distribution of a particular outcome (income, health, education, etc). The key idea is that a fair society should produce outcomes that depend on individuals’ effort and not on their external circumstances such as gender, socioeconomic background, etc. We propose measuring inequality of opportunity as the welfare loss attributed to the outcome differences among individuals who exert a similar level of effort. Our results are in line with those aspects of fairness literature that give priority to the ex post compensation approach to equality of opportunity. Finally, we present an empirical application for the measurement of the welfare loss in the income distribution in Europe. We have observed a high degree of heterogeneity among European countries. The welfare loss due to inequality of opportunity ranges in those, from basically zero to almost one fifth of their potential welfare. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Keywords: Equality of opportunity; Income distribution; Ex post compensation; Welfare loss; D31; D63; J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10888-013-9247-6 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: On the welfare loss caused by inequality of opportunity (2012)
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:kap:jecinq:v:12:y:2014:i:2:p:221-237

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... th/journal/10888/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10888-013-9247-6

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Economic Inequality is currently edited by Stephen Jenkins

More articles in The Journal of Economic Inequality from Springer, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().