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Equality of Opportunity: Welfare and Public Policies

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Handbook of Equality of Opportunity

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Abstract

This chapter is devoted to discussing the relationship that exists between welfare and public policy through the measurement of inequality. Our narrative outlines how setting the right policy to increase welfare must necessarily come through a multidimensional assessment of inequality. In recent years, a thoughtful frontier of inequality measurement has proposed an analysis of inequality of opportunity to understand and study the differences that exist between and within countries. We aim at discussing how the study of inequality measurement is essential for understanding the channels that contribute to making the income distribution much more unfair over time. For this, we argue on the main methodologies proposed in the literature − discussed in a straightforward manner – both from a theoretical and empirical view. In particular, the empirical illustration through EU-SILC data can help to understand how important such a pathway can be to capture as much as possible the effects on welfare.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Bologna and GLO, Bologna, Italy

    Luca Bonacini

  2. Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Giuseppe Pignataro

Authors
  1. Luca Bonacini
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  2. Giuseppe Pignataro
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Giuseppe Pignataro .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Mitja Sardoč

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Bonacini, L., Pignataro, G. (2023). Equality of Opportunity: Welfare and Public Policies. In: Sardoč, M. (eds) Handbook of Equality of Opportunity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52269-2_70-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52269-2_70-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52269-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52269-2

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