Abstract

The modern formulation of equality of opportunity emerges from discussions in political philosophy from the second half of the twentieth century beginning with Rawls (1971) and Dworkin (1981a,b).

Handbook of Income Distribution, Volume 2A

217

ISSN 1574-0056, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-59428-0.00005-9 to be responsible. Importantly, inequality of opportunity for income exists when individuals' incomes are in some important part determined by the educational achievement and income of the families that raised them. We review the philosophical debates referred to, commenting upon them from an econ­omist's viewpoint. We propose several ways of modeling equality (or inequality) of opportunity, pointing out that an equal-opportunity ethic implies a non-welfarist way of ranking social outcomes. We propose that economic development should be conceived of as the equalization of opportunities for income in a country. We consider equalization of opportunity from a dynamic viewpoint, and we review popular attitudes with regard to distributive justice, showing that there is substantial popular support for an equal-opportunity ethic. We discuss the empirical issues that emerge in measuring inequality of oppor­tunity and provide a review of the empirical literature that measures degrees of inequality of opportunity for the achievement of various objectives, in various countries.

Keywords

Equality of opportunity, Responsibility, Circumstances, Effort, Compensation, Distributive justice

JEL Classification Codes

D63, D3

4.1.