Equality of Opportunity

" Equality of opportunity * " 1 2 by 3 John E. Roemer 4 and 5 Alain Trannoy 6 7 1. Introduction 8 In the welfarist tradition of social-choice theory, egalitarianism means equality of 9 welfare or utility 1. Conservative critics of egalitarianism rightly protest that it is highly 10 questionable that this kind of equality is ethically desirable, as it fails to hold persons 11 responsible for their choices, or for their preferences, or for the way they process 12 outcomes into some interpersonally comparable currency that one can speak of 13 equalizing. In political philosophy, beginning with John Rawls (1958, 1971), this 14 critique was taken seriously, and a new approach to egalitarianism transpired, which 15 inserted personal responsibility as an important qualifier of the degree of equality that is 16 ethically desirable. Thus, the development of egalitarian theory, since Rawls, may be 17 characterized as an effort to replace equality of outcomes with equality of opportunities, 18 where opportunities are interpreted in various ways. Metaphors associated with this 19 view are 'leveling the playing field,' and 'starting gate equality.' The main 20 philosophical contributions to the discussion were, following Rawls, from Amartya Sen 21 for their comments on previous drafts of his chapter. 1 Welfarism is the view that social welfare (or the social objective function) should be predicated only on the utility levels of individuals; that is, that the only information required to compare social alternatives is that summarized in the utility-possibilities sets those alternatives generate. It is a special case of consequentialism. See chapter 3 for further discussion. 2 (1989) 2. The debate is said to be about 'equality of what,' and the philosophical view is 23 sometimes called 'luck egalitarianism,' a term coined by Elizabeth Anderson (1999). 24 Economists (besides Sen) have been involved in this discussion from 1985 25 onwards. John Roemer (1993, 1998) proposed an algorithm for calculating policies that 26 would equalize opportunities for achievement of a given objective in a population. Marc 27 Fleurbaey and François Maniquet contributed economic proposals beginning in the 28 1990s, and recently summarized in Fleurbaey (2008). Other authors who have 29 Dirk Van de gaer (1993). An empirical literature is rapidly developing, calculating the 31 extent to which opportunities for the acquisition of various objectives are unequal in 32 various countries, and whether people hold views of justice consonant with equality of 33 opportunity. 34 …