Inequality of Opportunity and Education - How it works

Once we understand what inequality of opportunity is, the next natural question is not only how much inequality exists, but how it is transmitted. In other words, if we know that family background, parents’ education, income, place of birth, or the school one attends matter, the interesting question is to understand through which mechanisms these circumstances end up influencing people’s lives.

Inequality of opportunity does not suddenly appear at one specific moment. Rather, it is usually the result of a long process in which advantages and disadvantages accumulate over time. Some children grow up in households with greater economic stability, more books, more information about the education system, more adult support, and higher academic expectations. Others grow up in families that may value education enormously, but have fewer resources, less time, less information, or less capacity to support certain decisions. These differences do not determine everything, but they do shape the set of realistic options that each student has in front of them.

How inequality of opportunity is transmitted

The relevant question is why this context matters. It may matter because families with higher incomes have access to better housing, better schools, private tutoring, or extracurricular activities. It may matter because parents with more education know the system better, understand its rules more clearly, and are better able to guide their children. It may matter because some students have better information about scholarships, educational pathways, costs, or career prospects. It may also matter because the neighbourhood, peers, and nearby role models influence what a person believes is possible for themselves. Therefore, let us briefly review some channels through which inequality of opportunity is transmitted.

1. Material resources. Having a higher income does not guarantee educational success, but it reduces many frictions. It makes it possible to study in better conditions, access technology, receive external support, live in more stable environments, and, in some cases, choose better schools. For a student from a lower-income family, progressing through the education system may require not only effort, but effort under greater pressure and with less room for error. This is the case for many foreign students, such as Chinese immigrants.

   
   

2. Cultural and educational resources. Parents with higher levels of education are usually more familiar with academic language, institutional procedures, applications, scholarships, and the long-term value of different educational decisions. This is not about good or bad parents. It is about unequal familiarity with the rules of the game. When the system is complex, those who understand it better are usually in a better position to benefit from it.

   
   

3. Information. This point seems especially important to me. Many educational decisions are made under uncertainty: which school to choose, whether to continue studying, whether to choose vocational training or upper secondary education, which university degree to pursue, how much each option costs, or what returns it may have in the labour market. If information is distributed unequally, two students with similar talent and effort may end up on very different paths. One may know that an option exists, that it is accessible, and that it is realistic; another may never even consider it. In this sense, information asymmetry can become a very concrete form of inequality of opportunity.

   
   

4. Expectations and aspirations. Students do not make decisions only according to what is objectively possible, but also according to what they believe is possible for someone like them. If a person grows up in an environment where university, advanced training, or certain professions are common, these options may seem natural. If they grow up in an environment where no one has followed that path, where there is economic pressure, or where educational institutions feel distant, the same trajectory may seem much less realistic. Aspirations do not arise in a vacuum: they are socially formed.

   
   

5. Educational institutions. Teacher quality, guidance, peer composition, school climate, and the way a school responds to difficulties can strongly influence outcomes. In some cases, schools can compensate for disadvantages of origin. In others, they can reproduce or even widen them. This is especially relevant in issues such as grade repetition, which in the Spanish case often appears as an important mechanism. Repetition does not only have academic consequences; it can also affect motivation, expectations, and educational continuity, especially among students from more disadvantaged backgrounds.

   
   

6. Territory. The place where one grows up affects the schools available, social networks, public services, transport, safety, the nearby labour market, and the role models that surround a person. Opportunities are not distributed evenly across space. Two students with a similar family background may face different prospects depending on the neighbourhood, municipality, or region in which they grow up.

Figure 1. Simplified diagram of the transmission mechanism of inequality of opportunity.

How it affects people

All of this connects with what is known as intergenerational mobility, which measures the extent to which children’s economic or educational position depends on that of their parents. In a society with high mobility, family background weighs less on future outcomes, whereas in a society with low mobility, the starting point shapes the destination more strongly. No society completely eliminates the influence of family, and it probably would not make sense to expect that. But the important question is whether the circumstances into which someone is born restrict their life opportunities too much.

A society can have inequality of outcomes and still allow some movement between social positions. But when high inequality is combined with low mobility, inequality stops being merely a difference between people at a given moment and becomes a mechanism of reproduction across generations. This is the intuition behind the so-called Great Gatsby Curve: in many countries, higher inequality is associated with lower intergenerational mobility.

Figure 2. Intuitive relationship between income inequality and intergenerational mobility.

Education is central to this process because it sits right in the middle of the chain. On the one hand, it is one of the main channels through which families transmit advantages. On the other hand, it is one of the most important tools a society has to reduce that transmission. For this reason, it is worth avoiding an overly simple view of education. Education does not automatically equalise. It can do so if access is broad, quality is high, information is clear, guidance works, and students with fewer resources receive real support. But if schools are segregated, if information is unequal, if repetition penalises some groups more than others, or if higher education is difficult to navigate, then education may end up reproducing part of the inequalities it is supposed to correct.

The main idea is simple: opportunities are transmitted through money, information, expectations, educational institutions, neighbourhoods, networks, and the labour market. Individual effort matters, but it is always exercised within a context. Two students may both work very hard, but one may do so with more information, greater stability, better support, and better institutions around them. And this means understanding that responsibility is exercised under unequal conditions.

That is why studying the mechanisms of transmission is so important. If we only measure inequality of opportunity, we know the size of the problem. But if we understand its channels, we can begin to think about where to intervene: in guidance, scholarships, grade repetition, school segregation, early childhood education, the information available to families, or territorial inequalities. A fair education system should ensure that the starting point does not automatically become destiny. That goal is difficult, perhaps impossible to achieve completely, but it remains one of the best criteria for assessing whether an education system truly expands people’s opportunities. Now, a lucid mind would ask: what evidence have we gathered on this topic? Answering this question is the main aim of the next article.

References

• Black, S. E., & Devereux, P. J. (2010). Recent developments in intergenerational mobility. NBER Working Paper No. 15889. https://www.nber.org/papers/w15889

  
  

• Bourguignon, F., Ferreira, F. H. G., & Menéndez, M. (2007). Inequality of opportunity in Brazil. Review of Income and Wealth, 53(4), 585–618. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4991.2007.00247.x

  
  

• Cabrera, L., Marrero, G. A., Rodríguez, J. G., & Salas-Rojo, P. (2021). Inequality of opportunity in Spain: New insights from new data. Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, 237(2), 153–185. https://doi.org/10.7866/HPE-RPE.21.2.6

  
  

• Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P., & Saez, E. (2014). Where is the land of opportunity? The geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States. NBER Working Paper No. 19843. https://www.nber.org/papers/w19843

  
  

• Corak, M. (2013). Income inequality, equality of opportunity, and intergenerational mobility. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 27(3), 79–102. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.27.3.79

  
  

• Ferreira, F. H. G., & Gignoux, J. (2011). The measurement of inequality of opportunity: Theory and an application to Latin America. Review of Income and Wealth, 57(4), 622–657. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4991.2011.00467.x

  
  

• Marrero, G. A., Palomino, J. C., & Sicilia, G. (2024). Inequality of opportunity in educational achievement in Western Europe: Contributors and channels. The Journal of Economic Inequality, 22, 383–410. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-023-09595-5

  
  

• Roemer, J. E., & Trannoy, A. (2015). Equality of opportunity. En A. B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (Eds.), Handbook of Income Distribution (Vol. 2A, pp. 217–300). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-59428-0.00005-9

  
  

• Sicilia, G., Marrero, G. A., & Palomino, J. C. (2022). Inequality of opportunity in educational performance in Spain and Europe: The role of expectations, reading skills and repetition as determinants of inequalities. “la Caixa” Foundation, The Social Observatory.

  
  

• Soria, J., & Medina, O. (2025). Intergenerational mobility in Spain: Geographic analysis and causal neighborhood effects. World Inequality Lab Working Paper No. 2025/12.

  
  

• Suárez Álvarez, A., & López Menéndez, A. J. (2025). The role of family background and education in shaping inequalities: Evidence from the Spanish regions. Social Policy and Society, 24(2), 355–372. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746423000179