Poverty and inequality of opportunity

This chapter critically reviews the few normative discussion on the interaction between poverty and inequality of opportunity. Standard outcome-based poverty measurement assumes responsibility has no role in poverty measurement, while inequality of opportunity postulates may leave individuals unassisted for all the poverty that result from the exertion of own responsibility. We seek arguments that delimit the relevance of responsibility in poverty appraisal and find in Scanlon (1989) a useful and flexible framework to decide when we want poor people to bear the bad consequences of their choices. Then we critically review the very few methods that integrate inequality of opportunity considerations into poverty measurement and suggest avenues for further research.