IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/inq/inqwps/ecineq2017-436.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Income inequality and inequality of opportunity in Europe. Are they on the rise?

Author

Listed:
  • Ana Suarez Alvarez

    (University of Oviedo, Spain)

  • Ana Jesus Lopez Menendez

    (University of Oviedo, Spain)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the behaviour of income inequality and Inequality of Opportunity over time for 26 European countries. The analysis is carried out using microdata collected by the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), which incorporate a wide variety of personal harmonised variables, allowing comparability between countries. The availability of this database for years 2004 and 2010 is particularly relevant to assess changes over time in the main inequality indices and the contribution of circumstances to inequality of opportunity. Furthermore, a bootstrap estimation is performed with the aim of testing if the differences between both years are statistically significant.

Suggested Citation

  • Ana Suarez Alvarez & Ana Jesus Lopez Menendez, 2017. "Income inequality and inequality of opportunity in Europe. Are they on the rise?," Working Papers 436, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
  • Handle: RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2017-436
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2017-436.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bossert W., 1996. "Redistribution mechanisms based on individual characteristics," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 51-51, February.
    2. Frank A. Cowell, 1980. "On the Structure of Additive Inequality Measures," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(3), pages 521-531.
    3. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1984. "Inequality Decomposition by Population Subgroups," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1369-1385, November.
    4. Erik Schokkaert & Kurt Devooght, 2003. "Responsibility-sensitive fair compensation in different cultures," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 21(2), pages 207-242, October.
    5. Anders Björklund & Markus Jäntti & John Roemer, 2012. "Equality of opportunity and the distribution of long-run income in Sweden," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 39(2), pages 675-696, July.
    6. Alesina, Alberto & La Ferrara, Eliana, 2005. "Preferences for redistribution in the land of opportunities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(5-6), pages 897-931, June.
    7. Foster, James E. & Shneyerov, Artyom A., 2000. "Path Independent Inequality Measures," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 199-222, April.
    8. 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.
    9. Francisco H.G. Ferreira & Jérémie Gignoux, 2011. "The Measurement of Inequality of Inequality of Opportunity: Theory and an Application to Latin America," Post-Print halshs-00754503, HAL.
    10. Wulf Gaertner & Lars Schwettmann, 2007. "Equity, Responsibility and the Cultural Dimension," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(296), pages 627-649, November.
    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. Ana Suárez Álvarez & Ana Jesús López Menéndez, 2020. "Trends in Inequality of Opportunity for Developing Countries: Does the Economic Indicator Matter?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 149(2), pages 503-539, June.

    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. Ana Suárez Álvarez & Ana Jesús López Menéndez, 2018. "Assessing Changes Over Time in Inequality of Opportunity: The Case of Spain," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 989-1014, October.
    2. Ana Suárez Álvarez & Ana Jesús López Menéndez, 2016. "Inequality of opportunity and income inequality in Spain: An analysis over time," Working Papers 423, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    3. X. Ramos & D. Van De Gaer, 2012. "Empirical Approaches to Inequality of Opportunity: Principles, Measures, and Evidence," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 12/792, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    4. Ana Suárez Álvarez & Ana Jesús López Menéndez, 2021. "Dynamics of inequality and opportunities within European countries," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(4), pages 555-579, October.
    5. 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.
    6. Xavier Ramos & Dirk Van de gaer, 2021. "Is Inequality of Opportunity Robust to the Measurement Approach?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 67(1), pages 18-36, March.
    7. Antonio Abatemarco, 2015. "A Gini approach to inequality of opportunity: evidence from the PSID," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(4), pages 1497-1519, December.
    8. Ferreira, Francisco H. G. & Peragine, Vito, 2015. "Equality of Opportunity: Theory and Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 8994, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. 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.
    10. Song, Yang & Zhou, Guangsu, 2019. "Inequality of opportunity and household education expenditures: Evidence from panel data in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 85-98.
    11. 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).
    12. Magdalou, Brice & Nock, Richard, 2011. "Income distributions and decomposable divergence measures," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2440-2454.
    13. Gustavo A. Marrero & Juan G. Rodriguez, 2012. "Macroeconomic determinants of inequality of opportunity and effort in the US: 1970-2009," Working Papers 249, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    14. Francisco Ferreira & Jérémie Gignoux & Meltem Aran, 2011. "Measuring inequality of opportunity with imperfect data: the case of Turkey," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(4), pages 651-680, December.
    15. Paul Hufe & Andreas Peichl, 2020. "Beyond Equal Rights: Equality of Opportunity in Political Participation," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 66(3), pages 477-511, September.
    16. Marrero, Gustavo A. & Rodríguez, Juan G., 2013. "Inequality of opportunity and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 107-122.
    17. Juan C. Palomino & Gustavo A. Marrero & Juan G. Rodríguez, 2019. "Channels of Inequality of Opportunity: The Role of Education and Occupation in Europe," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 1045-1074, June.
    18. 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.
    19. Marc Fleurbaey & Vito Peragine & Xavier Ramos, 2017. "Ex post inequality of opportunity comparisons," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(3), pages 577-603, December.
    20. Carlos Gradín & Gabriela Zapata-Román, 2024. "Unpacking inequality of opportunity in Chile: the role of birth circumstances using a Shapley decomposition," Working Papers 676, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:inq:inqwps:ecineq2017-436. 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: Maria Ana Lugo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecineea.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.