Liberal and Radical Equality of Opportunity in Sweden

Political philosophy has developed different conceptions of equality of opportunity, but empirical research measuring social inequality has rarely distinguished between them. We argue that a crucial distinction can be made between liberal and radical equality of opportunity. Liberal equality of opportunity argues that everyone with the same abilities who makes the same choices should have the same life chances, whereas radical equality of opportunity regards as unfair the effect on life chances of any factor beyond the individual’s control, including the abilities one is born with. We measure liberal and radical equality of opportunity in Sweden and obtain precise estimates with little measurement error thanks to the high quality of the Swedish register data. We compare liberal and radical equality of opportunity in seven different measures of life chances: education, occupation, income, wealth, and physical fitness, height, and BMI as measures of health. The results show that the differences between liberal and radical equality of opportunity are large for education, occupation, income, and physical fitness. For height, BMI, and wealth, however, there are essentially no differences between liberal and radical equality of opportunity. In sum, our results show that conclusions about equality of opportunity in life chances depend on the specific conception of equality of opportunity used and the life chance looked at, even in a society like Sweden, which is widely known for its highly developed, egalitarian welfare state.