“Fighting inequality requires adressing both inequality of outcomes and inequality of opportunity,” said François Bourguignon, Professor at the Paris School of Economics, at a seminar organised jointly by the EIB Institute, Luxembourg Income Study, University of Luxembourg and other partners as part of the “Inequality and…” series.

“These two concepts of inequality are strongly linked and both should be used for policy making,” he added. Inequality of economic outcomes regards earnings or incomes and inequality of opportunity, or inequity, is related to the assets any individual holds, such as education, and that directly and indirectly generate economic outcomes.

“Inequity may matter as much for economic efficiency as inequality of outcome,” he said, underlining that “huge progress has been made in the understanding of inequality policies but there are many unknowns, such as what optimal inequality is? and perception versus reality of inequalities”.

He concluded by saying that “inequality is likely to increase because of upcoming technical change”.

Click here for presentation.