Measuring Unfair Inequality: Reconciling Equality of Opportunity and Freedom from Poverty
中文摘要
关于分配偏好的实证证据表明，人们并不认为不平等本身就是问题，而是会考虑结果的公平与否。本文提出了一种关于不公平的不平等的观点，并基于两项广受认同的公平原则——机会平等与免于贫困——引入了一种新的不平等衡量指标。文章发展了一种将不平等及其变化趋势分解为不公平成分与公平成分的方法。我们提供了该指标的两项实证应用：第一，从公平视角分析美国 1969 年至 2014 年不平等的演变；第二，2010 年在美国与 31 个欧洲国家之间进行相应的国际比较。我们的结果表明，不公平的不平等与美国自 1980 年以来有充分文献记载的不平等增长相吻合。这一趋势由社会流动性下降所驱动，即父母的教育程度和职业对其子女收入的重要性日益上升。在我们进行国际比较的 32 个国家中，这个“机会之国”在 2010 年位列最不公平的社会之列。
Abstract
Abstract Empirical evidence on distributional preferences shows that people do not judge inequality as problematic per se but that they take into account the fairness or unfairness of the outcome. This article conceptualizes a view of unfair inequality and introduces a new measure of inequality based on two widely held fairness principles: equality of opportunity and freedom from poverty. It develops a method for decomposing inequality and its trends into an unfair and a fair component. We provide two empirical applications of our measure. First, we analyse the development of inequality in the US from 1969 to 2014 from a fairness perspective. Second, we conduct a corresponding international comparison between the US and 31 European countries in 2010. Our results document that unfair inequality matches the well-documented inequality growth in the US since 1980. This trend is driven by decreases in social mobility, i.e., increasing importance of parental education and occupation for the income of their children. Among the 32 countries of our international comparison, the land of opportunity ranks among the most unfair societies in 2010.