Measuring and Implementing Equality of Opportunity for Income

Departing from the welfarist tradition, recent theories of justice focus on individual opportunities as the appropriate standard for distributive judgments. Justice is seen as requiring equality of opportunity, instead of outcomes, among the individuals. To explore how this philosophical conception can be translated into concrete public policy, we select the in-come as relevant outcome and the income tax as the relevant redistributive policy, and we address the following questions: (i) what is the degree of opportunity inequality in an income distribution? (ii) how to design an opportunity egalitarian income tax policy? Both positive and normative criteria for ranking income distributions on the basis of equality of oppor-tunities are derived. Moreover, we characterize an opportunity egalitarian income tax policy and we formulate criteria for choosing among alternative tax systems.

Higher education and equality of opportunity in Italy

This paper proposes a definition of equality of educational opportunities. Then, it develops a comprehensive model that allows to test for the existence of equality of opportunity in a given distribution and to rank distributions according to equality of opportunity. Finally, it provides an empirical analysis of equality of opportunity for higher education in Italy.Equality of Opportunity, Higher Education, Stochastic Dominance

Ex ante versus ex post equality of opportunity

We study the difference between the ex post and the ex ante perspectives in equality of opportunity (EOp), and the possibility of a clash between them. We argue that ex ante EOp is a potential trap because someone motivated by ex post EOp may be led to believe that ex ante EOp is another natural embodiment of the same idea. As we show, it is not. Moreover, we explore the relationship between the ex post/ex ante tension and the well documented clash between the "compensation principle" and various "reward principles": we show that the tension between reward and compensation only exists if one endorses an ex post view of EOp; on the contrary, it vanishes if one adopts an ex ante view of equality of opportunity.equality of opportunity, ex ante/ex post, compensation, reward

On Preference, Freedom and Diversity

We study the problem of ranking sets of options in terms of freedom of choice. We propose a framework in which both the diversity of the options and the preferences of the agent over the options do play a role. We formulate some axioms that reflect these two aspects of freedom and we study their logical implications. Two diifferent criteria for ranking sets are characterized, which generalize some of the rankings proposed so far in the literatureRanking Sets; Freedom of Choice; Diversity relations

Measuring long-term inequality of opportunity

In this paper, we introduce and apply a general framework for evaluating long-term income distributions according to the Equality of Opportunity principle. Our framework allows for both an exante and an ex-post approach to EOp. Our ex-post approach relies on a permanent income measure defined as the minimum annual expenditure an individual would need in order to be as well off as he could be by undertaking inter-period income transfers. There is long-term ex-post inequality of opportunity if individuals who exert the same effort have different permanent incomes. In comparison, the ex-ante approach focuses on the expected permanent income for individuals with identical circumstances. Hence, the ex-ante approach pays attention to inequalities in expected permanent income between different types of individuals. To demonstrate the empirical relevance of a long-run perspective on EOp, we exploit a unique panel data from Norway on individuals’ incomes over their working lifespan.equality of opportunity, social welfare, inequality, permanent income, intertemporal choice, ex-ante, ex-post.

Measuring Long-Term Inequality of Opportunity

In this paper, we introduce and apply a general framework for evaluating long-term income distributions according to the Equality of Opportunity principle. Our framework allows for both an ex-ante and an ex-post approach to EOp. Our ex-post approach relies on a permanent income measure defined as the minimum annual expenditure an individual would need in order to be as well off as he could be by undertaking inter-period income transfers. There is long-term ex-post inequality of opportunity if individuals who exert the same effort have different permanent incomes. In comparison, the ex-ante approach focuses on the expected permanent income for individuals with identical circumstances. Hence, the ex-ante approach pays attention to inequalities in expected permanent income between different types of individuals. To demonstrate the empirical relevance of a long-run perspective on EOp, we exploit a unique panel data from Norway on individuals' incomes over their working lifespan.equality of opportunity, social welfare, inequality, permanent income, intertemporal choice, ex-ante, ex-post

Poverty rankings of opportunity profiles

We address the problem of ranking distributions of opportunity sets in terms of poverty. In order to accomplish this task, we identify a suitable notion of ‘multidimensional poverty line’ and we characterize axiomatically several poverty rankings of opportunity profiles. Among them, the Head-Count and the Opportunity-Gap poverty rankings, which are the natural counterparts of the most widely used income poverty indices.Poverty, opportunity sets, head-count, poverty-gap.

Economic growth and equality of opportunity

In this paper we argue that a better understanding of the relationship between inequality and growth can be obtained by shifting the analisys from the space of final achievements to the space of opportunities. To this end, we introduce the Opportunity Growth Incidence Curve, that can be used to evaluate the income dynamics of specific groups of the population and to infer the role of growth in the evolution of inequality of opportunity over time. By employng a rank dependent social welfare function we provide a rigorous normative justification for the use of the OGIC: we obtain suitable dominance conditions and we show how they can be interpreted in terms of OGIC dominance. We also propose an index that can be used to measure the impact of growth in terms of ooopotunity redistribution. Finally, we provide two empirical illustrations, for Italy and for Brasil, which show the potentials of the tools we have introduced.INCOME INEQUALITY, INEQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY, ECONOMIC GROWTH

Fair and unfair income inequalities in Europe

This paper analyses the extent of income inequality and opportunity inequality in 25 European countries. The present work contributes to understanding the origin of standard income inequality, helping to identify potential institutional setups that are associated to opportunity inequality. We distinguish between ex-ante and ex-post opportunity inequality. We find that ex-ante equality of opportunity exhibits positive correlation with public expenditure in education, whereas ex-post equality of opportunity is also positively associated to union presence and to fiscal redistribution.Inequality of opportunity, income inequality.