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IZA Discussion Paper No. 10940
August 2017
Equality of Opportunity for Well-Being

published in: Review of Income and Wealth, 2019, 65 (S1), S228-S255

A growing literature has tried to measure the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to acquire income. At the same time, policy makers have doubled down on efforts to go beyond income when measuring well-being. We attempt to bridge these two areas by measuring the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to achieve a high level of well-being. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel to measure well-being in four different ways including incomes. This makes it possible to determine if the way well-being is measured matters for identifying who the opportunity-deprived are and for tracking inequality of opportunity over time. We find that, regardless of how well-being is measured, the same people are opportunity-deprived and equality of opportunity has improved over the past 20 years. This suggests that going beyond income has little relevance if the objective is to provide equal opportunities.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

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