Bootstrapping Inequality of Opportunity in Europe. Are changes significant?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to shed some light on the behaviour of income
 inequality and inequality of opportunity over time for 26 European
 countries. The analysis is carried out using microdata collected by the
 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC),
 which incorporate a wide variety of personal harmonised variables, allowing
 comparability between countries. The availability of this database for the
 years 2004 and 2010 is particularly relevant to assess changes over time in
 the main inequality indices and the contribution of “circumstance” to
 inequality of opportunity. Bootstrap methodology is used with the aim of
 testing if the differences between the two years are statistically significant.
 Results show that observed changes in inequality of opportunity and income
 inequality are in most cases significant and also prove the robustness of the
 bootstrap methods to analyse the evolution of income inequality and
 inequality of opportunity.