Measuring Equality of Opportunity based on Individual’s Responsibility: Comparison Belgium and Colombia

Details

Supervisors

Maniquet, François

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences économiques, orientation générale, à finalité approfondie

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on Equality of Opportunities (EOp). An equitable society is taken here as one which ensures that each member is able to achieve any level of happiness, wealth, education or success based on its own merits and desires after compensation for agent's 'unlucky' circumstances. Based on the theoretical framework of Bossert & Fleurbaey (1996) and Cowell (1985), I measure the distance between income distributions to judge how EOp varies across several definitions of hypothetical economies for two countries, Belgium and Colombia, with data from EU-SILC and the GEIH respectively, between 2010 and 2013. Findings reveal that for both countries, levels of EOp have decreased over the years, and for both databases the effect of the error term into the circumstances vector has an important impact on EOp measurement. Lastly, I find that the distance between the observed income distribution and the constructed norm distribution changes from about 90 to 87% of the distance between the observed income distribution and the equal distribution in Belgium, and from about 50 to 48% in Colombia.

Citations

• APA

Montoya Calero, H. (2021). Measuring Equality of Opportunity based on Individual’s Responsibility: Comparison Belgium and Colombia. https://dial-mem.test.bib.ucl.ac.be/handle/2078.2/25960