Measuring Unfair Inequality: Reconciling Equality of Opportunity and Freedom from Poverty

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hufe, Paul; Kanbur, Ravi; Peichl, Andreas
• 署名单位: University of Bristol; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Cornell University; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; University of Munich
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdab101
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 3345-3380
• 关键词: Intergenerational income mobility; UNITED-STATES; recent trends; fairness; luck; RESPONSIBILITY; taxation; egalitarianism; preferences; principles

摘要

Empirical evidence on distributional preferences shows that people do not judge inequality as problematic per se but that they take into account the fairness or unfairness of the outcome. This article conceptualizes a view of unfair inequality and introduces a new measure of inequality based on two widely held fairness principles: equality of opportunity and freedom from poverty. It develops a method for decomposing inequality and its trends into an unfair and a fair component. We provide two empirical applications of our measure. First, we analyse the development of inequality in the US from 1969 to 2014 from a fairness perspective. Second, we conduct a corresponding international comparison between the US and 31 European countries in 2010. Our results document that unfair inequality matches the well-documented inequality growth in the US since 1980. This trend is driven by decreases in social mobility, i.e., increasing importance of parental education and occupation for the income of their children. Among the 32 countries of our international comparison, the land of opportunity ranks among the most unfair societies in 2010.