Estimating labour-income-based inequality of opportunity for a selection of EU-SILC countries: National and urban–rural perspectives

Abstract

This paper measures the extent of inequality of opportunity at the national level and by degree of urbanization. Using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we implement regression models to measure the share of the variation in individuals’ labour income that is due to uncontrollable circumstances, namely the relative importance of parental education, activity status of parents, occupation of father and household financial situation. Our results indicate that the level of inequality of opportunity at the country level ranges between 5% and 26% for the sample of countries studied. The analysis by degree of urbanization does not provide evidence of cities as social elevators compared with less urbanized regions.