Equality of opportunity is an ethical goal with almost universal appeal. The interpretation taken here is that a society has achieved equality of opportunity if it is the case that what individuals accomplish, with respect to some desirable objective, is determined wholly by their choices and...

We conduct the first quantitative assessment of federal college subsidies during the 1930s. Overlapping generation households invest in children's education to maximize multigenerational utility, and the government subsidizes college to maximize enrollment subject to a budget constraint and...

This paper compares income inequality and income mobility in the Scandinavian countries and the United States during the 1980s. The results demonstrate that inequality is greater in the United States than in the Scandinavian countries and that the ranking of countries with respect to inequality...

This paper is prepared as a chapter for the Handbook of Income Distribution, Volume 2 (edited by A. B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon, Elsevier-North Holland, forthcoming). Like the other chapters in the volume (and its predecessor), the aim is to provide comprehensive review of a particular area...

This paper considers a parametric model for the joint distribution of income and wealth. The model is used to analyze income and wealth inequality in five OECD countries using comparable household-level survey data. We focus on the dependence parameter between the two variables and study whether...

We study the inequality of disposable income in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden during the late 1980s and early 1990s when unemployment rose dramatically in all four countries. A standard measure of inequality - the Gini coefficient - was surprisingly stable in all countries during this...

We develop methods and employ similar sample restrictions to analyze differences in intergenerational earnings mobility across the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. We examine earnings mobility among pairs of fathers and sons as well as fathers and daughters...

This paper proposes a new approach for analyzing the relationship between macroeconomic factors and the income distribution. The conventional method of analysis is regression of summary inequality indices on variables such as the unemployment and inflation rates. Building on the lessons from...