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Inequality of Opportunity, Economic Development, and Poverty

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Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

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Abstract

Traditionally, countries’ level of development has been measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, in the last decades, the use of this common statistic has been questioned both in the academic and policy arena. The main reason is that such monetary aggregate would fail to capture distributive, nonmonetary, and processual aspects in the generation of a society’s achievement, thereby leading only to a partial evaluation of its degree of development. The perspective of equality of opportunity, rooted in an appealing conception of social justice, which is particularly salient in modern societies, could be the way to follow for a more comprehensive assessment of economic development. This chapter explores the consequences of adopting the equality of opportunity perspective for the definition and the measurement of important social objectives such as the economic development and the eradication of poverty.

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Acknowledgements

Responsible Section Editor: M Niaz Asadullah.

The article has benefitted from valuable comments of the editor and Gaston Yalonetzky (external referee).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université libre de Bruxelles, ECARES, Bruxelles, Belgium

    Domenico Moramarco

  2. Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Flaviana Palmisano

  3. Department of Economics and Finance, University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Vito Peragine

Authors
  1. Domenico Moramarco
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  2. Flaviana Palmisano
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  3. Vito Peragine
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vito Peragine .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. UNU-MERIT & Princeton University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Klaus F. Zimmermann

Section Editor information

  1. Monash University Malaysia, Subang Jaya, Malaysia

    M. Niaz Asadullah

  2. Centre on Skills, Knowledge & Organisational Performance, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    M. Niaz Asadullah

  3. Dept of Economics, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    M. Niaz Asadullah

  4. School of Education, Environment and Development (SEED),, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    M. Niaz Asadullah

  5. IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Germany

    M. Niaz Asadullah

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Moramarco, D., Palmisano, F., Peragine, V. (2023). Inequality of Opportunity, Economic Development, and Poverty. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_230-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_230-1

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