Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/109722 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series No. WP14/20
Publisher: 
University College Dublin, UCD School of Economics, Dublin
Abstract: 
Recent developments in the inequality literature has stressed the importance of inequality of opportunity as opposed to inequality of outcome. In this paper we investigate the presence of ex post inequality of opportunity in two measures of educational achievement for a representative sample of Irish 9 year olds. Students are partitioned into four groups according to maternal education levels and gaps in outcomes are calculated between each group. Quantile decompositions of the pairwise gaps reveal that almost half of the gaps can be explained by differences in characteristics between the groups Detailed decompositions show consistently significant effects for income, number of childrens books in the home and maternal age.
Subjects: 
inequality of opportunity
quantile decomposition
JEL: 
I24
D63
C21
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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