How useful is inequality of opportunity as a policy construct?

Ravi Kanbur and Adam Wagstaff

No 338, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: The academic literature on equality of opportunity has burgeoned. More recently, the concepts and measures have begun to be used by policy institutions, including in specific sectors like health and education. Indeed, it is argued that one advantage of focusing on equality of opportunity is that policy makers are more responsive to that discourse than on equality of outcomes per se. This paper presents a critique of equality of opportunity in the policy context. While the empirical analysis to which the literature has given rise is useful and is to be welcomed, current methods for quantifying and implementing the concept with a view to informing the policy discourse face a series of fundamental questions that remain unanswered. Without a full appreciation of these difficulties, these methods may prove to be misleading in the policy context.

Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2014-338.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: How Useful Is Inequality of Opportunity as a Policy Construct? (2016)
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)
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:inq:inqwps:ecineq2014-338

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maria Ana Lugo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).