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Assessing Inequality of Human Opportunities: A New Approach for Public Policy in Tunisia

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  • Hatem Jemmali

    (University of Sousse)

  • Mohamed Amara

Abstract

The universally used socioeconomic indices like education and housing indicators (access to water, sanitation and electricity) appraise solely the coverage level of basic opportunities in a society without capturing the differential intensity across various subgroups. This paper provides a new application of the known Human Opportunity Index (HOI) in order to assess the inequality in distribution of basic services at the regional scale in one of the MENA’s most unequal countries. Based on the differentiation between circumstance and effort variables in John Roemer’s theory, we correlate inequality of opportunities with seven observed circumstances which are not controllable by individuals. Logistic regressions required to calculate various HOI indexes are used to estimate the contribution of main socioeconomic and demographic circumstances. Large and significant disparities particularly in access to safe water and sanitation have been detected between the Eastern (littoral) and Western (inland) areas. The residence area, the education level of the household head and the per capita household expenditure were the most important circumstances causing such regional disparities. The paper also affords some potential policy implications through the HOI estimation results.

Suggested Citation

  • Hatem Jemmali & Mohamed Amara, 2014. "Assessing Inequality of Human Opportunities: A New Approach for Public Policy in Tunisia," Working Papers 871, Economic Research Forum, revised Nov 2014.
    • Handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:871
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    Cited by:

    1. Mohamed Amara, 2015. "Multilevel Modelling of Individual Fertility Decisions in Tunisia: Household and Regional Contextual Effects," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 124(2), pages 477-499, November.
    2. Bassma Said Jellali, 2019. "Assessing Policy Effectiveness to Measure Inequality of Opportunity in Wellbeing and Education: Case of Tunisia," International Journal of Applied Economics, Finance and Accounting, Online Academic Press, vol. 5(2), pages 65-77.
    3. Anis Saidi & Mekki Hamdaoui & Wajdi Moussa, 2021. "Assessing Policy Effectiveness in Reducing Inequality of Opportunity in Access to Public Services and Education Among Tunisian Children," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 12(3), pages 993-1018, September.

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