We propose a set of new methods to estimate inequality of opportunity based on conditional inference regression trees. In particular, we illustrate how these methods represent a substantial improvement over existing empirical approaches to measure in equality of opportunity. First, they minimize...

Equality of opportunity is an important normative ideal that concerns politicians and the larger public alike. In spite of its wide acceptance, current estimation approaches in the literature suffer from severe data restrictions that lead to biased estimates of inequality of opportunity. These...

Empirical evidence on distributional preferences shows that people do not judge inequality as problematic per se but that they take the underlying sources of income differences into account. In contrast to this evidence, current measures of inequality do not adequately reflect these normative...