Equality Of Income Inequality

Looking at this issue superficially it is easy to come to the conclusion that there is inequality in regards to opportunity. One can use data provided by Emmanuel Saez to show that there is a linear relationship between income share and the percentage of children attending college. Thus as income share increases the percentage of children receiving education increases. Children who are from poor families do not have the same advantages as rich families. However, Bruce Sacerdote has conflicting data. Sacerdote writes that 33% of variance of family income is due to genetics, 11% is due to family environment, and 56% are environmental factors. Sacerdote’s data suggests that family environment does help a child, but it is not the main cause of income variance. This can be seen with people like Howard Schultz or Oprah Winfrey who came from poverty and became wealthy.
Economist Greg Mankiw address the equality of opportunity in “Defending the One Percent”, “In the end, I am led to conclude that concern about income inequality, and especially growth in incomes of the top 1 percent, cannot be founded primarily on concern about inefficiency and inequality of opportunity”(Mankiw