IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sbe/breart/v30y2010i2a3687.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring Progress Toward Basic Opportunities for All

Author

Listed:
  • Barros, Ricardo Paes de
  • Vega, José R. Molinas
  • Saavedra, Jaime

Abstract

Universal access to basic opportunities is undoubtedly a central objective of development. In this study, we propose an alternative scalar measure. In addition to being sensitive to the number of available opportunities, this new measure is also concerned with how these opportunities are allocated, and is therefore known as an equity sensitive coverage rate. The proposed measure is increasing in the overall coverage rate and decreasing in deviations from the ideal of equal opportunity. It is obtained by deducting a penalty equal to the deviation from the ideal of equal opportunity from the overall coverage rate. We show that this equity sensitive measure has several suitable properties. In particular, we demonstrate that it is consistent with both rst- and second-order stochastic dominance. As a consequence, this measure is Pareto-consistent and sensitive to improvements in the allocation of the available opportunities. According to this index, any increase in thenumber of opportunities that also leads to an increase in the average coverage rate among the most vulnerable groups would always represent a progress towards opportunities for all. In addition, we propose an estimation procedure for the index and its variance.

Suggested Citation

  • Barros, Ricardo Paes de & Vega, José R. Molinas & Saavedra, Jaime, 2010. "Measuring Progress Toward Basic Opportunities for All," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 30(2), December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sbe:breart:v:30:y:2010:i:2:a:3687
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://periodicos.fgv.br/bre/article/view/3687
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Denis Cogneau & Sandrine Mesplé-Somps, 2008. "Inequality of opportunity for income in five countries of Africa," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Inequality and Opportunity: Papers from the Second ECINEQ Society Meeting, pages 99-128, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    2. Aaberge, Rolf & Langørgen, Audun & Mogstad, Magne & Østensen, Marit, 2008. "The Impact of Local Public Services and Geographical Cost of Living Differences on Poverty Estimates," IZA Discussion Papers 3686, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. repec:dau:papers:123456789/1552 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Roemer, John E. & Aaberge, Rolf & Colombino, Ugo & Fritzell, Johan & Jenkins, Stephen P. & Lefranc, Arnaud & Marx, Ive & Page, Marianne & Pommer, Evert & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 2003. "To what extent do fiscal regimes equalize opportunities for income acquisition among citizens?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 539-565, March.
    5. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4320 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Aaberge, Rolf & Bhuller, Manudeep & Langørgen, Audun & Mogstad, Magne, 2010. "The distributional impact of public services when needs differ," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(9-10), pages 549-562, October.
    7. François Bourguignon & Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Marta Menéndez, 2007. "Inequality Of Opportunity In Brazil," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(4), pages 585-618, December.
    8. Lefranc, Arnaud & Pistolesi, Nicolas & Trannoy, Alain, 2009. "Equality of opportunity and luck: Definitions and testable conditions, with an application to income in France," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1189-1207, December.
    9. Daniele Checchi & Vitorocco Peragine & Laura Serlenga, 2008. "Income Inequality and Opportunity Inequality in Europe," Rivista di Politica Economica, SIPI Spa, vol. 98(5), pages 263-292, September.
    10. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Jérémie Gignoux, 2011. "The Measurement Of Inequality Of Opportunity: Theory And An Application To Latin America," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 57(4), pages 622-657, December.
    11. Roemer, John E. & Aaberge, Rolf & Colombino, Ugo & Fritzell, Johan & Jenkins, Stephen P. & Lefranc, Arnaud & Marx, Ive & Page, Marianne & Pommer, Evert & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 2003. "To what extent do fiscal regimes equalize opportunities for income acquisition among citizens?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 539-565, March.
    12. Vito Peragine, 2004. "Measuring and implementing equality of opportunity for income," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 22(1), pages 187-210, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Balcazar, Carlos Felipe & Narayan, Ambar & Tiwari, Sailesh, 2015. "Born with a silver spoon : inequality in educational achievement across the world," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7152, The World Bank.
    2. Balcázar, Carlos Felipe, 2015. "Lower bounds on inequality of opportunity and measurement error," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 102-105.
    3. World Bank, 2012. "Monitoring Basic Opportunities throughout the Lifecycle with the Human Opportunity Index in Chile," World Bank Publications - Reports 11919, The World Bank Group.
    4. Rose Mungai & Stephen Okiya, 2019. "Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in The Gambia," World Bank Publications - Reports 34340, The World Bank Group.
    5. Ana Abras & Alejandro Hoyos & Ambar Narayan & Sailesh Tiwari, 2013. "Inequality of opportunities in the labor market: evidence from life in transition surveys in Europe and Central Asia," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-22, December.
    6. Molina, Ezequiel & Narayan, Ambar & Saavedra-Chanduvi, Jaime, 2013. "Outcomes, opportunity and development : why unequal opportunities and not outcomes hinder economic development," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6735, The World Bank.
    7. World Bank, 2013. "Burkina Faso : Opportunities for Children," World Bank Publications - Reports 15991, The World Bank Group.
    8. Narayan, Ambar & Saavedra-Chanduvi, Jaime & Tiwari, Sailesh, 2013. "Shared prosperity : links to growth, inequality and inequality of opportunity," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6649, The World Bank.
    9. World Bank Group, 2016. "Moving Up the Ladder," World Bank Publications - Reports 25173, The World Bank Group.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jean-François Carpantier & Christelle Sapata, 2013. "An Ex-Post View of Inequality of Opportunity in France and its Regions," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 281-311, September.
    2. Marc Fleurbaey & Vito Peragine, 2013. "Ex Ante Versus Ex Post Equality of Opportunity," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 80(317), pages 118-130, January.
    3. Vito Peragine & Flaviana Palmisano & Paolo Brunori, 2014. "Economic Growth and Equality of Opportunity," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 247-281.
    4. Luis Fernando Gamboa & Fábio D. Waltenberg, 2011. "Inequality of opportunity in educational achievement in Latin America: Evidence from PISA 2006-2009," Working Papers 206, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    5. CARPANTIER, Jean-François & SAPATA, Christelle, 2012. "Unfair inequalities in France: A regional comparison," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2012038, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    6. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Vito Peragine, 2015. "Equality of opportunity: Theory and evidence," Working Papers 359, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    7. Niehues, Judith & Peichl, Andreas, 2011. "Lower and Upper Bounds of Unfair Inequality: Theory and Evidence for Germany and the US," IZA Discussion Papers 5834, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Judith Niehues & Andreas Peichl, 2012. "Bounds of Unfair Inequality of Opportunity: Theory and Evidence for Germany and the US," CESifo Working Paper Series 3815, CESifo.
    9. Aitor Calo-Blanco & J. García-Pérez, 2014. "On the welfare loss caused by inequality of opportunity," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(2), pages 221-237, June.
    10. ANDREOLI Francesco & HAVNES Tarjei & LEFRANC Arnaud, 2014. "Equalization of opportunity: Definitions, implementable conditions and application to early-childhood policy evaluation," LISER Working Paper Series 2014-12, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    11. Marrero, Gustavo A. & Rodríguez, Juan G., 2013. "Inequality of opportunity and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 107-122.
    12. Cojocaru, Alexandru, 2014. "Fairness and inequality tolerance: Evidence from the Life in Transition Survey," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 590-608.
    13. Cuesta, Jose, 2014. "Social Spending, Distribution, and Equality of Opportunities: The Opportunity Incidence Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 106-124.
    14. Alexandru Cojocaru, 2011. "Inequality and well-being in transition economies: A non-experimental test of inequality aversion," Working Papers 238, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    15. Francesco Andreoli & Arnaud Lefranc, 2013. "Equalization of opportunity: Definitions and implementable conditions," Working Papers 310, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    16. John E. Roemer & Alain Trannoy, 2016. "Equality of Opportunity: Theory and Measurement," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1288-1332, December.
    17. Niehues, J. (Judith) & Andreas Peichl, 2012. "GINI DP 34: Bounds of Unfair Inequality of Opportunity: Theory and Evidence for Germany and the US," GINI Discussion Papers 34, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    18. Vito Peragine & Federico Biagi, 2019. "Equality of opportunity: theory, measurement and policy implications," JRC Research Reports JRC118542, Joint Research Centre.
    19. Gamboa, Luis Fernando & Waltenberg, Fábio D., 2012. "Inequality of opportunity for educational achievement in Latin America: Evidence from PISA 2006–2009," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 694-708.
    20. Judith Niehues & Andreas Peichl, 2014. "Upper bounds of inequality of opportunity: theory and evidence for Germany and the US," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(1), pages 73-99, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sbe:breart:v:30:y:2010:i:2:a:3687. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Núcleo de Computação da FGV EPGE (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sbeeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.