Equality of Opportunity for Well-Being

Daniel Gerszon Mahler () and Xavi Ramos ()
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Daniel Gerszon Mahler: World Bank

No 10940, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: A growing literature has tried to measure the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to acquire income. At the same time, policy makers have doubled down on efforts to go beyond income when measuring well-being. We attempt to bridge these two areas by measuring the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to achieve a high level of well-being. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel to measure well-being in four different ways including incomes. This makes it possible to determine if the way well-being is measured matters for identifying who the opportunity-deprived are and for tracking inequality of opportunity over time. We find that, regardless of how well-being is measured, the same people are opportunity-deprived and equality of opportunity has improved over the past 20 years. This suggests that going beyond income has little relevance if the objective is to provide equal opportunities.

Keywords: responsibility; measurement; equality of opportunity; effort; well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D3 D63 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hap and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published in: Review of Income and Wealth , 2019, 65 (S1), S228-S255

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Related works:
Working Paper: Equality of Opportunity for Well-Being (2017)
Working Paper: Equality of opportunity for well-being (2017)
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