How Useful Is Inequality of Opportunity as a Policy Construct?

Ravi Kanbur and Adam Wagstaff

Chapter 4 in Inequality and Growth: Patterns and Policy, 2016, pp 131-150 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In policy and political discourse, “equality of opportunity” is the new motherhood and apple pie. It is often contrasted with equality of outcomes, with the latter coming off worse. Equality of outcomes is seen variously as Utopian, as infeasible, as detrimental to incentives, and even as inequitable if outcomes are the result of differing efforts. Equality of opportunity, on the other hand, is interchangeable with phrases such as ‘leveling the playing field’, ‘giving everybody an equal start’ and ‘making the most of inherent talents.’ In its strongest form, the position is that equality of outcomes should be irrelevant to policy; what matters is equality of opportunity.

Keywords: Educational Attainment; Income Inequality; Credit Market; Moral Intuition; World Development Report (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: How Useful is Inequality of Opportunity as a Policy Construct? (2015)
Working Paper: HOW USEFUL IS INEQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AS A POLICY CONSTRUCT? (2014)
Working Paper: How useful is inequality of opportunity as a policy construct? (2014)
Working Paper: How useful is inequality of opportunity as a policy construct ? (2014)
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:pal:intecp:978-1-137-55454-3_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781137554543

DOI: 10.1057/9781137554543_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Economic Association Series from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().