Channels of inequality of opportunity: The role of education and occupation in Europe

This paper studies the contribution of individual education and occupation to individual opportunity in Europe. Although the differences in inequality of opportunity (IO) among European countries are significant, no systematic approach has yet been proposed to analyse the channels through which different individual circumstances turn into different income levels. Here, we propose a simple two-step method to quantify the contribution to IO of individual education and occupation across Europe in 2004 and 2010. We find that the level of education channels up to 30\% of total IO, with important differences across Europe but no clear patterns of change over time. Moreover, we observe a negative correlation between the share of IO channelled through education and the share of the population with tertiary education. Once education is taken into account, the occupational category of individuals explains less than 5\% of total IO in most European countries.