Program > Papers by author > Levavasseur Edward

Robust comparisons of inequality of opportunity for skills acquisition under the veil of ignorance
Edward Levavasseur  1@  , Nicolas Gravel  2, 3@  , Francesco Andreoli  4, *@  
1 : Aix-Marseille School of Economics  (AMSE)  -  Website
Aix Marseille School of Economics
GREQAM, Centre de la Charité, 2 rue de la Charité, 13236 Marseille Cedex 02 -  France
2 : Aix-Marseille School of Economics  (AMSE)  -  Website
Ecole Centrale Marseille (ECM), Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)
GREQAM, Centre de la Charité, 2 rue de la Charité, 13236 Marseille Cedex 02 -  France
3 : Centre de sciences humaines de New Delhi  (CSH)  -  Website
Ministère de l\'Europe et des Affaires étrangères, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
"2, Aurangzeb Road New Delhi 110011 India" -  France
4 : Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research  (LISER)  -  Website
Maison des Sciences Humaines 11, Porte des Sciences L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette/Belval -  Luxembourg
* : Corresponding author

This paper examines a robust operational denition of "opportunity equalization"
for skills acquisition among children of dierent family background. The criteria
allow to compare societies are described as collections of distributions of outcome
(lotteries), one such distribution for every family background type. Societies are
confronted from the view point of a philosopher placed behind a veil of ignorance
with respect to the type he/she sould have in this society. Under established axioms
of choice under ambiguity, we show that the preferences of this philosopher involve
comparison of the expectation of some concave function of the expectations of the
consequences of skills lotteries on children well-being. We provide an empirical
criterion for comparing societies that coincide with the unanimity of all rankings that
would command agreement among these philosophers when they exhibit aversion to
inequality of opportunity. This last result is used to assess the evolution of inequality
of opportunity for skills acquisition across PISA countries, decomposing inequalities
developed early in life from the contribution of the education systems.


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