Equality of opportunity in Brazil from 1999 to 2009: estimation and decomposition by means of the Shapley value

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the structure and evolution of equality of opportunity in Brazil from 1999 to 2009. We estimated the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) and the inequality of opportunity index for the country and calculated the decomposition of the latter by means of the Shapley value. The results for the HOI show that there were major advances in the period considered, in spite of severe deficiencies related to sanitation. As for the second index, inequalities in access to opportunities within the subgroups, such as race or area of residence, are more relevant to the observed inequality of opportunity in the country than the differences between subgroups.