Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper proposes the adoption of an opportunity egalitarian perspective to assess and compare growth processes and their distributional implications. To this aim, a set of graphical tools are introduced that allow one to evaluate the role of growth and recessions in the evolution of individuals’ opportunities over time. These tools satisfy the ex post principle of equality of opportunity and represent an extension of the “opportunity growth incidence curve,” a framework proposed by the literature to evaluate growth according to the ex ante principle of equality of opportunity.

Inequality of opportunity is defined as the difference in individuals’ outcome systematically
correlated with morally irrelevant pre-determined circumstances, such as ethnicity, socioeconomic
background, area of birth. This definition has been extensively studied by economists
on the assumption that, in addition to being normatively undesirable, it can be related to low
potentials for growth. However, empirical estimations of inequality of opportunity require accessing