Economic Inequality: Loss of Opportunity

Living conditions are vastly unequal between different places in our world today.
And they have also changed over time: in some places living conditions changed
dramatically, in others more slowly.

We see that today’s global inequality is the consequence of two centuries of

unequal progress. Some places have seen dramatic improvements, while others have
not. It is on us today to even the odds and give everyone – no matter where they are
born – the chance of a good life. This is not only right, but, as we will see below, is also
realistic. Our hope for giving the next generations the chance to live a good life lies in
broad development that makes possible for everyone what is only attainable for few
today.

A good quote is, “If we are concerned about equality of opportunity tomorrow,
we need to be concerned about inequality of outcome today”. In our opinion, it strikes
many people as inherently unfair that some people are able to enjoy healthy, wealthy,
happy lives whilst others continue to live in ill-health, poverty and sorrow. For them it
is the inequality in the outcomes of people’s lives that matters. For others it is the
inequality in opportunity – the opportunity to achieve good outcomes and that is unfair.
But the point of this text is to say that these two aspects of inequality are not separable.
Inequality of outcome among today’s generation is the source of the unfair advantage
received by the next generation.

In conclusion, our stories play out amidst these major global changes and
inequalities and it is these circumstances that largely determine how healthy, wealthy,
and educated each of us will be in our own lives. Yes, our own hard work and life
choices matter. But as we will see in the data, these matter much less than the one big
thing over which we have no control: where and when we are born. This single, utterly
random, factor largely determines the conditions in which we live our lives.