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The measurement of opportunity inequality: a cardinality-based approach

Efe Ok and Laurence Kranich ()

UC3M Working papers. Economics from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía

Abstract: We consider the problem of ranking distributions of opportunity sets on the basis of equality. First, conditional on agents' preferences over individual opportunity sets, we formulate the analogues ofthe notions ofthe Lorenz partial ordering, equalizing Dalton transfers, and inequality averse social welfare functionals -concepts which play a central role in the literature on income inequality. For the particular case in which agents rank opportunity sets on the basis of their cardinalities, we establish an analogue of the fundamental theorem of inequality measurement: one distribution Lorenz dominates another if and only if the former can be obtained from the latter by a finite sequence of equalizing transfers, and if and only if the former is ranked higher than the latter by all inequality averse social welfare functionals. In addition, we characterize the smallest monotonic and transitive extension of the cardinality-based Lorenz inequality ordering.

Keywords: Opportunity; Inequality; Equalizing; Transfers; Lorenz; Domination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995-09
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Journal Article: The measurement of opportunity inequality: a cardinality-based approach (1998) Downloads
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