Equality of Opportunity

Assessing inequalities in preventive care use in Europe

“…A second approach is to consider all inequalities in prevention use which are not explained by needs and preferences as unfair. This is in line with the equality of access view (with the assumption that time and money constraints are effectively equal across individuals) ((Le Grand, 1982;Mooney, 1983, Culyer andWagstaff, 1993)) and with an equality of opportunity approach ( (Roemer, 1993;Roemer, 1998;Roemer, 2002)) (once one has taken into account correlation between needs and socio-economic status, see Fleurbay and Schokkaert, 2012). Our empirical approach considers a careful standardization of needs.…”

Giving equality of opportunity a fair innings

“…The first is the axiomatic approach of Fleurbaey (1994), Bossert (1995) and others which, so far, has been too abstract to motivate significant applied research. The second is the model proposed by Roemer (1996Roemer ( , 1998Roemer ( , 2002 which, although less general, has proved more suitable to economic modelling and empirical work. Roemer suggests that all factors influencing individual attainment be sorted between a category of effort factors, for which individuals must be held responsible, and a category of circumstance factors, which are the source of illegitimate variation in outcomes.…”

Equality of when?

“…The choice of the appropriate equalisandum, for example, has been explored abstracting from the time structure of individual lives and focusing on a single generation (e.g., Sen, 1980;Dworkin, 1981a;1981b;Arneson, 1989;Cohen, 1989;Roemer, 1998). Similarly, the analysis of different measures of inequality has typically focused on the distribution of the relevant variable in a single period (e.g., Sen, 1973;Temkin, 1993).…”

“…2 See, for example, the classic papers by Arrow (1973) and Dasgupta (1974). For a more recent discussion see Roemer andVeneziani (2004, 2007).…”