Inequality of Opportunity and Economic Growth: How Much Can Cross‐Country Regressions Really Tell Us?
利用117个家庭收支调查和134个人口健康调查数据，重新审视总收入不平等和机会不平等与经济增长的关系，发现两者对增长的负面影响均不显著，不支持机会不平等阻碍增长的假说。
Income differences arise from many sources. While some kinds of inequality, caused by differential rewards to effort, might be associated with faster economic growth, other kinds, arising from unequal opportunities for investment, might be detrimental to economic progress. This study uses two new datasets, consisting of 117 income and expenditure household surveys and 134 Demographic and Health Surveys, to revisit the relationship between total inequality and economic growth. In particular, we ask whether inequality of opportunity, driven by circumstances at birth, has a negative effect on subsequent growth. Using the income and expenditure micro dataset, we find that while both total income inequality and inequality of opportunity are negatively associated with growth, the coefficient estimates are insignificant. The evidence is similarly equivocal using the Demographic and Health Surveys data. On balance, the data do not provide support for the hypothesis that inequality of opportunity is bad for growth.