Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/189577 
Year of Publication: 
2005
Series/Report no.: 
Documento de Trabajo No. 22
Publisher: 
Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS), La Plata
Abstract: 
This paper examines the argument for public provision of certain private goods, like education and health, based on equality of opportunity by studying the utility possibility frontier of a society in which there is a concern for the distribution of these goods. A given quality of education or health services can be consumed for free in the public sector, but people can opt-out and purchase their desired quality levels in the private sector. Some of the conclusions are: (i) a pure cash transfer is optimal when the utility redistribution is either “sufficiently” small or large; (ii) if and only if both the equality-of-opportunity concern and the utility redistribution are large enough, can an in-kind program which attracts the whole population be justified; (iii) even when everybody chooses the in-kind program, it may be optimal to perform some additional utility redistribution by increasing the size of such program.
Subjects: 
equality of opportunity
redistribution
education
in-kind
JEL: 
D3
H4
I2
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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