Measuring opportunity

In American political discourse, a distinction is often made between inequa lity of condition and inequality of opportunity. The former involves the di stribution of valued rewards in society, while the latter has to do with ac cess to these rewards. In terms or scientific work, much more progress has been made on the study of inequality of condition than on the study of ineq uality of opportunity. This paper proposes an approach to defining and meas uring inequality of opportunity that avoids many of the problems found in p revious research. In particular, my method: (1) is consistent with contempo rary usage or the opportunity concept, (2) differentiates opportunity from outcome, in that opportunity is defined as the chance of achieving a goal, (3) takes into account the fact that people have different chances or devel oping certain goals, and (4) allows the measurement of inequality of opport unity at both the individual and group levels. The approach is illustrated utilizing occupational data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. The empi rical analysis reveals less inequality of occupational opportunity than ine quality or income, somewhat more inequality of occupational opportunity amo ng men than women, and more occupational opportunity among women than men.