| Summary: | The recent paper by García-Gómez et al. (2014) in this journal is part of a rapidly growing industry aiming to quantify – and hence give some policy teeth to – the concept of inequality of opportunity. The idea behind the concept is simple yet powerful. Not all inequality is bad. The bad bit of inequality (‘inequality of opportunity’) is the part that emerges because of factors over which we have no control (our ‘circumstances’). By contrast, inequality that emerges because of our different choices and efforts (holding constant our circumstances) is fine and to be encouraged.
On the face of it, questioning the usefulness of inequality of opportunity seems about as wrongheaded as questioning the merits of family vacations, Thanksgiving, or dessert trolleys. What is not to like about it? We argue in this Editorial, as we have argued at greater length elsewhere (Kanbur and Wagstaff, 2015), that the idea is not quite as useful as it might at first glance appear and is in fact rather dangerous. But turned upside down, it might yet be useful.
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