Equality of Opportunity and Redistribution in Europe
Equality of Opportunity and Redistribution in Europe
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欧洲的机会平等和再分配
DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.1728332
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发表时间：
2010
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. Peichl
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Lina Dunnzlaff;Dirk Neumann;Judith Niehues;A. Peichl
机会平等(EOP)的概念可以追溯到Roemer(1993,1998)，他认为一个社会应该保证其成员无论其情况如何都能平等地获得利益，同时让他们负责通过努力将这种机会转化为实际利益。这样的争论已经出现在整个欧盟的政治议程上，最近的东扩将具有相当不同经济、社会和政治背景的国家聚集在一起。本文调查了15个欧洲国家的家庭背景对收入获得的影响。它还仔细审查了政府如何通过设计其税收和转移方案来影响EOP。我们的总体结果表明，在相对贫穷的国家，家庭背景与经济成功之间的联系通常比富裕国家更紧密。此外，我们发现斯堪的纳维亚国家、欧洲大陆国家和盎格鲁-撒克逊国家有明显的国家聚集性。对于东欧，我们的结果就不那么确定了。看看欧盟税收和福利计划的影响，可以得出结论，税收和转移支付都会减少机会不平等，而社会福利通常扮演着关键角色。此外，税收优惠制度对机会不平等的均等化影响与提及结果不平等的传统概念时观察到的影响有很大不同。
The concept of equality of opportunity (EOp) goes back to Roemer (1993, 1998) who argues that a society shall guarantee its members equal access to advantage regardless of their circumstances, while holding them responsible for turning that access into actual advantage by the application of effort. Such arguments have been on the political agenda across the European Union, where the recent enlargements have brought together countries with rather different economic, social, and political backgrounds. This paper investigates how family background influences income acquisition in 15 European countries. It also scrutinizes how governments affect EOp through the design of their tax and transfer schemes. Our overall results suggest that the link between family background and economic success is usually tighter in relatively poor countries than in rich countries. Moreover, we find a clear country clustering for the Scandinavian, the Continental European, and the Anglo-Saxon countries. For Eastern Europe, our results are less definite. Looking at the impact of the tax and benefit schemes in the EU, it can be concluded that both taxes and transfers reduce inequality of opportunities, with social benefits typically playing the key role. Furthermore, the equalizing impacts of the tax benefit system on inequality of opportunity differ substantially from the ones observed when referring to the traditional notion of inequality of outcomes.