Outcomes, Opportunity and Development : Why Unequal Opportunities and Not Outcomes Hinder Economic Development

Molina, Ezequiel ; Narayan, Ambar ; Saavedra-Chanduvi, Jaime

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ADULT POPULATION;    ADVERSE IMPACT;    AGRICULTURE;    ASSET DISTRIBUTION;    BIBLIOGRAPHY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6735
RP-ID  :  WPS6735

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper studies the relationshipbetween inequality of opportunity and development outcomesin a cross-country setting. Scholars have long debated theimpact of inequality on growth, development, and the qualityof institutions in a society. The empirical relationshipsare however confounded by the notion that"inequality" can be seen as a composite ofinequality arising from differences in effort and ability,which would tend to encourage competition and productivity,and inequality attributable to unequal opportunities,particularly in terms of access to basic goods and services,which might translate to wasted human potential and lowerlevels of development. The analysis in this paper applies ameasure of educational opportunities that incorporatesinequality between "types" or circumstance groups.Theories from economic history are used to instrument forthis type of inequality in a large cross-country dataset.The results seem to confirm the hypothesis that this measureof inequality of opportunity is a better fit for structuralinequality than the Gini index of income. The resultssuggest that inequality ofendowments at the outset ofhistory led to unequal educational opportunities, which inturn affected development outcomes such as institutionalquality, infant mortality, and economic growth. The findingsare robust to several checks on the instrumental variable specification.