Ex post inequality of opportunity comparisons

In this paper we propose di¤erent criteria to rank income distributions according to equality of opportunity. Di¤erent from existing ones, our criteria explicitly recognize the interplay between circumstances and e¤ort. We characterize them axiomatically and we compare them with existing criteria; then we propose some scalar measures. We show that our ex post criteria are mostly obtained from "seemingly" ex ante properties. In the second part of the paper we apply our new criteria to measuring inequality of opportunity in Germany. We illustrate our ex-post inequality of opportunity approach based on classes by means of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the …rst decade of the 2000s. JEL: D3, D63, D71 KEYWORDS: Equality of opportunity, ex post/ex ante, compensation, reward, SOEP, Germany. University of Princeton, m‡[email protected] yUniversity of Bari, [email protected] zUniversitat Autonòma de Barcelona, [email protected]. Xavier Ramos acknowledges …nancial support of projects ECO2013-46516-C4-1-R (Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología) and SGR2014-1279 (Generalitat de Catalunya).