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Measuring inequality of opportunity through between-group inequality components

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  • Antonio Abatemarco

Abstract

Opportunity egalitarians support rich-to-poor redistribution whenever this allows for the compensation of income disparities due to non-responsible choices (circum- stances). In this paper we investigate the measurement of opportunity inequality within Roemer's (1993) pragmatic theory where equally subgroup ranked individuals are assumed to be equally responsible. Given entropy-based, deprivation-based and welfaristic inequality decomposition procedures, we show that the between-group Gini index - obtained from the two-components decomposition (Dagum 1997) - is the only between-group inequality index satisfying the Pigou-Dalton principle of transfer as reformulated for opportunity egalitarianism.
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  • Antonio Abatemarco, 2010. "Measuring inequality of opportunity through between-group inequality components," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(4), pages 475-490, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jecinq:v:8:y:2010:i:4:p:475-490
    DOI: 10.1007/s10888-009-9121-8
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    Cited by:

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    2. Abatemarco, Antonio, 2016. "Doing rawls justice: Evidence from the PSID," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 10, pages 1-39.
    3. Philippe Van Kerm, 2013. "Generalized measures of wage differentials," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 465-482, August.
    4. Stéphane Mussard, 2010. "Pair-Based Decomposable Inequality Measures," Cahiers de recherche 10-27, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    5. Domenico Rossignoli, 2015. "Too many and too much? Special-interest groups and inequality at the turn of the century," Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali, Vita e Pensiero, Pubblicazioni dell'Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, vol. 130(3), pages 337-366.
    6. Antonio Abatemarco & Elena Lagomarsino & Maria Russolillo, 2023. "Gender Pension Gap in EU Countries: A Between-Group Inequality Approach," Risks, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-15, March.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; Opportunity; Decomposition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

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