Thus, those who are concerned about equality of opportunity should also
care about inequality of outcomes, but only to the extent that these differences
in outcomes are due, in the words of John Roemer (2004), to “differential
circumstances.” Roemer considers three categories of circumstances through
which parents may give their children an advantage. First, parents may transmit
economic advantages through social connections facilitating access to jobs,
admission to particular schools or colleges, or access to other sources of human
capital. Second, parents may influence life chances through the genetic transmission
of characteristics like innate ability, personality, and some aspects of
health which are valued in the labor market. Third, parents may influence the
lifetime earnings prospects of their children in subtle ways, like through a family
culture and other monetary and nonmonetary investments that shape skills,
aptitudes, beliefs, and behavior. When it comes to “equality of opportunity,”
a common pattern is that people tend to support policies that would assure a
level playing field in access to jobs and education, less willing to take steps to
offset genetic advantages, and conflicted about what steps might be appropriate
in counterbalancing within-family investments. But my main point here is that
deciding which circumstances should be offset by policy steps of some kind, and
as a result the fraction of parental income advantage passed on to children that
is consistent with “equality of opportunity,” is a value judgment that different
societies may well make differently.