Measuring equal opportunity: tools and empirical applications to France and the United States.

Summary This thesis measures inequality of opportunity in income and education in France and the United States. According to post-welfarist economic theories of justice, the measurement of inequality must distinguish between inequalities that result from factors exogenous to individual responsibility and those that result from choices for which individuals can be held responsible. Chapter I uses stochastic dominance tools to measure the evolution of inequality of income opportunities in France from 1980 to 2000. Chapter II presents an index of inequality of opportunity and makes an international comparison between nine developed countries during the 1990s. Chapter III presents a micro-simulation approach to income distributions in the United States between 1985 and 2000 to measure the share of inequality of opportunity in total inequality. Finally, Chapter IV focuses on the causal nature of inequality of opportunity and measures the impact of parental income on children's schooling using US data.