Inequality of opportunity in an outermost region: The case of the Canary Islands

Abstract

This article estimates the inequality of opportunity (IO) for the Canary Islands archipelago, a European outermost region of seven islands, including two capital islands and five peripheral islands. To achieve this goal, a survey has been designed to cover a wide range of circumstances, including type of household, socioeconomic background, health status, type of school, family environment, and instilled values during childhood. This new database is one of the main contributions of the paper. For all of the Canary Islands, IO represents approximately 12.4% of total inequality, which is in line with the values found for the South European countries in related studies. However, when we distinguish by type of island, the IO in the peripheral islands accounts for almost 20% of total inequality, which is more in line with Latin American economies. This difference may affect the origin of significant migration flows from the peripheral to the capital islands and future divergence in their development.