This thesis studies the role of spatial factors in influencing the observed inequality in various spheres of life. Despite extensive research, the efforts to identify and tackle inequalities are nested in two interrelated but somehow separate domains. One genre of literature focuses on inequalities in "aspatial" form: inequality of income, wealth, consumption and inequalities due to gender, parental background, race and ethnicity. The other body of literature instead studies inequalities in a "spatial" form, which can be generalized as inequalities due to location: inequality in access to education, health services, public goods and to decent employment. Thus, there is often no explicit correspondence between the spatial and aspatial measures put forth and employed to empirically implement inequality investigations. This thesis aims to narrow this gap by employing methods and theories from both approaches. The notion of equality adapted by the thesis is defined as equality of opportunity (EOp), which holds in a society when the life chances of individuals depend solely on their own effort purged off exogenous factors that are defined as circumstances such as gender, race, ethnicity and family background. The thesis is comprised of three chapters, the first two chapters aim to bridge the theory and methods of EOp literature to Spatial Accessibility and Neighbourhood Effects studies respectively and the last chapter studies the Spatial Segregation by Income, motivated by the implications of equal opportunities arguments. The first chapter contributes to both accessibility and EOp literatures by a normative consideration of spatial equality analysing the physical distance from opportunities and the social distance between socio-economic groups. Moreover, using a survey data (Inserimento professionale dei laureati, 2011), the chapter shows that despite the expansion of higher education(HE) supply in the Italy took place during the period 1990-1997, there is still a high inequality in access to HE due to spatial distribution of opportunities and additional disparity due socioeconomic factors. The second chapter studies the role of parental neighbourhoods influencing the life chances of children both in terms of immediate effects on education and long-term effects on earnings. The chapter contributes to the neighbourhood studies by constructing individualized neighbourhoods based on a k nearest neighbour (knn) algorithm, which in return enhances the understanding of the temporal effects of neighbourhoods. Additionally, using the Place longitudinal data, the chapter quantifies the relative contribution of parental neighbourhoods to inequality of opportunity in Sweden. The third chapter of the thesis proposes a new index of spatial segregation by income and based on the evidence from Sweden, the chapter demonstrates the robustness of the proposed index.

Inequality of Opportunity and Space

TURK, UMUT
2017-01-01

Abstract

This thesis studies the role of spatial factors in influencing the observed inequality in various spheres of life. Despite extensive research, the efforts to identify and tackle inequalities are nested in two interrelated but somehow separate domains. One genre of literature focuses on inequalities in "aspatial" form: inequality of income, wealth, consumption and inequalities due to gender, parental background, race and ethnicity. The other body of literature instead studies inequalities in a "spatial" form, which can be generalized as inequalities due to location: inequality in access to education, health services, public goods and to decent employment. Thus, there is often no explicit correspondence between the spatial and aspatial measures put forth and employed to empirically implement inequality investigations. This thesis aims to narrow this gap by employing methods and theories from both approaches. The notion of equality adapted by the thesis is defined as equality of opportunity (EOp), which holds in a society when the life chances of individuals depend solely on their own effort purged off exogenous factors that are defined as circumstances such as gender, race, ethnicity and family background. The thesis is comprised of three chapters, the first two chapters aim to bridge the theory and methods of EOp literature to Spatial Accessibility and Neighbourhood Effects studies respectively and the last chapter studies the Spatial Segregation by Income, motivated by the implications of equal opportunities arguments. The first chapter contributes to both accessibility and EOp literatures by a normative consideration of spatial equality analysing the physical distance from opportunities and the social distance between socio-economic groups. Moreover, using a survey data (Inserimento professionale dei laureati, 2011), the chapter shows that despite the expansion of higher education(HE) supply in the Italy took place during the period 1990-1997, there is still a high inequality in access to HE due to spatial distribution of opportunities and additional disparity due socioeconomic factors. The second chapter studies the role of parental neighbourhoods influencing the life chances of children both in terms of immediate effects on education and long-term effects on earnings. The chapter contributes to the neighbourhood studies by constructing individualized neighbourhoods based on a k nearest neighbour (knn) algorithm, which in return enhances the understanding of the temporal effects of neighbourhoods. Additionally, using the Place longitudinal data, the chapter quantifies the relative contribution of parental neighbourhoods to inequality of opportunity in Sweden. The third chapter of the thesis proposes a new index of spatial segregation by income and based on the evidence from Sweden, the chapter demonstrates the robustness of the proposed index.
2017
Equality of Opportunity, Spatial Interaction, Higher Education Accessibility, Gravity Model, Neighbourhood Effects, Multilevel Models, Residential Segregation by Income
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
thesisUmutTurk.pdf

Open Access dal 30/12/2018

Descrizione: Doctoral Thesis Umut Türk
Tipologia: Tesi di dottorato
Licenza: Creative commons
Dimensione 36.45 MB
Formato Adobe PDF
36.45 MB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11562/965248
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus ND
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact