Unfair inequality: the definition of merit, the role of country of birth and the cumulative disadvantage

Fairness views shape individuals’ acceptance of inequality, thus their preferences for redistribution and individual incentives, which, in turn, affect policy intervention and economic growth. Since the 1970s equality of what debate (Sen, 1980), unbalances in the distribution of resources are assessed as fair or not depending on the sources of the observed inequality. A society in which worse life outcomes are strongly correlated with the characteristics people is born with, like sex or ethnicity, rather than individual effort and preferences, is commonly considered as undesirable. Equality of opportunities turns out to the be a principle of justice that enjoys widespread approval both in the debate about the egalitarian paradigm involving political philosophers and theoretical economists (Rawls, 1971; Arneson, 1989; Cohen, 1989; Dworkin, 1981a,b; Roemer, 1998; Fleurbaey and Schokkaert, 2009) and in the general public alike. Social surveys and experiments eliciting preferences for redistribution provide indeed evidence that individuals are more willing to accept differences in income which are due to effort rather than exogenous circumstances (Fong, 2001; Cappelen et al., 2010; Alesina and Giuliano, 2009). "Equal opportunities expand the range of paths open to us – educationally, professionally and in other spheres – thereby giving us the freedom to pursue lives whose contours are at a greater degree chosen by us, rather than dictated by limited opportunities.[...] Opportunities shape not only the paths we pursue but also the skills and talents we develop and the goal we formulate." (Fishkin, 2014, p. 2-3) In this thesis I embrace the aversion to inequality due to circumstances at birth together with the idea, inspired by Fishkin and enclosed in the previous quote, that we care about open- ing up opportunities, especially to the individuals who have limited ones, also because opportunities matter for human flourishing and well-being. I contribute to the discourse on distributive justice by considering diverse facets and perspectives. Firstly, exploring the adverse effects on social welfare resulting from the misleading commitment to meritocracy as a system supposed to ensure equitable distribution of opportunities and rewards. Secondly, assessing the role of the region of birth, among other circumstances, in predicting income inequality over the European continent. Lastly, incorporating a multidimensional notion of well-being, which takes into account the issue of clustering of multiple disadvantages, in the estimation of inequality of opportunity in Australia.