Lower Bounds on Inequality of Opportunity and Measurement Error
When measuring inequality of opportunity, researchers usually opt to eliminate within-type variation. Provided that in practice it is impossible to observe all circumstances, this implies that the researcher estimates a lower bound of the true leve...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2015
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/07/24835061/lower-bounds-inequality-opportunity-measurement-error http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22463 |
| Summary: | When measuring inequality of
opportunity, researchers usually opt to eliminate
within-type variation. Provided that in practice it is
impossible to observe all circumstances, this implies that
the researcher estimates a lower bound of the true level of
inequality of opportunity. By using data drawn from 27
Demographic Household Surveys (circa 2008), it is found that
lower bound estimates can have substantial measurement
error, and that measurement error can vary considerably
across countries. As a consequence, lower bound estimates of
inequality of opportunity can demand too little
redistribution to equalize inequalities due to circumstances
and can make the “traditional” cross-country comparisons misleading. |
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