Reexamining the inequality of opportunity in education in some European countries

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes inequality of opportunity in education in 20 European countries. We aim to examine to what extent students’ educational achievements are conditioned by circumstances such as their family background, school characteristics and peer effects, and by their own efforts. To that end, we propose a model that allows us to analyze the total effect of circumstances on overall education inequalities. Then, we propose a measure of inequality of opportunity that captures that effect.

We find that, among the selected countries, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg show the highest levels of inequality of opportunity, whereas Finland, Romania, Ireland, Spain and Norway get the lowest.

KEYWORDS:

• Inequality of opportunity
• Educational achievements
• PISA database
• Instrumental variables
• Generalized Method of Moments

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D 63
• C 13

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Notes

¹ Among others, Roemer and Trannoy (2014) provide a comprehensive survey on the theory of IOp.

² The effort variables are selected in line with de Fraja, Oliveira, and Zanchi (2010) and Kuehn and Landeras (2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under projects ECO2015-67519-P and ECO2014-51914-P; and by the Gobierno Vasco under projects IT568-13 and IT783-13.