The Theory of Equal Opportunities and Its Application to the Problem of Poverty
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2023.1.2311Keywords:
inequality of opportunities, poverty risk, opportunity profiling, socially vulnerable groups, Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, Shapley decomposition, regression analysisAbstract
The paper deals with the key ideas of the equal opportunities theory and their application to the study of poverty. Existing studies on poverty risk fail to take the controllability of poverty determinants into account. Studies of poverty have underinvestigated education, professional status, place of birth, and material well-being of the parent family, which are usually tested in the studies of inequality of opportunities. Analysis of not-belonging to the poor from the perspective of individual achievement and analysis of poverty from the perspective of personal controllability of its determinants may deepen understanding of poverty roots.
Poverty research can benefit from methodology designed to study inequality of opportunities. Shapley decomposition, Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition, and opportunity profiling are among them. The Shapley decomposition measures how individual factors-circumstances contribute to inequality of opportunities. The Oaxaca–Blinder method decomposes the general differential of inequality of opportunities into associative and compositional effects. The authors demonstrate the potential of these three methods using RLMS-HSE data collected in 2011.
In practical terms, applying equal opportunities theory to poverty might change priorities in fighting it. In addition to the traditional subsidization of low-income groups, the authors introduce the need of creating mechanisms that guarantee equal opportunities for everyone in terms their well-being at the level which exceeds poverty line.
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