Equality of Opportunity: Theory and Measurement
نویسندگان
چکیده
O some kinds of inequality are ethically objectionable. The distinction between morally acceptable and unacceptable inequal ity is perhaps the most important contribution of philosophical egalitarian thought during the last forty years. In particular, more information than the welfare derived from final outcomes is needed to render social judgment about the degree of inequality. One must also know the extent to which individuals with similar opportunities are responsible for the outcomes that arise—and this is non-welfare information. To the extent that economists ignore this distinction, they may be measuring and analyzing inequality in a way that is not ethically salient. The ubiquitous assumption made in the classical welfare tradition is that social welfare (or the social objective function) should be predicated only on the utility levels of individuals. Welfarism is a special case of consequentialism, which says that the ranking of social alternatives should depend only on outcomes. From this approach, the processes by which a social state came about— say, discussions of issues like the role of Equality of Opportunity: Theory and Measurement†
منابع مشابه
Localization of Determinants of Fertility through Measurement Adaptations in Developing-Country Settings: The Case of Iran; Comment on “Analysis of Economic Determinants of Fertility in Iran: A Multilevel Approach”
Studies investigating fertility decline in developing countries often adopt measures of determinants of fertility behavior developed based on observations from developed countries, without adapting them to the realities of the study setting. As a result, their findings are usually invalid, anomalous or statistically non-significant. This commentary draws on the research article by Moeeni and co...
متن کاملThe Criteria of Economic Justice
Criteria, criteria and general areas make it easy to measure the concept through the index. The criterion of measurement may be derived from the causal or causal method. In this descriptive-analytical method through conceptual explanation, in this paper, four concepts of economic justice are first considered independently and attempted to present a standard a priori method for each concept in i...
متن کاملOpportunity as a Space for Individuality: Its Value and the Impossibility of Measuring It*
In recent work in political philosophy and normative economics, there has been a growing interest in using concepts of opportunity to evaluate economic and social arrangements. This new emphasis is a reaction against the previous orthodoxy of welfarism, which evaluates states of affairs in terms of the extent to which individuals’ preferences are satisfied. Opportunity-based approaches differ f...
متن کاملFair Equality of Opportunity: Reconceiving Affirmative Action through a Rawlsian Lens
This paper examines common and past applications of affirmative action, including arguments for and against the application; presents John Rawls’ theory of justice, and proposes a framework using Rawls’ theory for future applications of affirmative action. The proposal relieves heavily on the principle of fair equality of opportunity, both as an indicator for when using affirmative action is ap...
متن کاملMobility as Progressivity: Ranking Income Processes According to Equality of Opportunity
Interest in economic mobility stems largely from its perceived role as an equalizer of opportunities, though not necessarily of outcomes. In this paper we show that this view leads very naturally to a methodology for the measurement of social mobility which has strong parallels with the theory of progressive taxation. We characterize opportunity–equalizing mobility processes, and provide simple...
متن کامل