The Galton Lecture for 1985: Inequality of Economic Opportunity

Abstract

‘Equality of opportunity’ is one of the few objectives of social policy that can be said to find support across the whole spectrum of public and political opinion. Karl Marx, John Rawls and R. H. Tawney as well as Milton Friedman, Sir Keith Joseph and many others, all appear to rally around the same banner in a rare display of unity. Thus Rawls, for example, advocates a system in which ‘offices and positions [are] open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity’, while Friedman praises the fact that ‘wherever anything approaching equality of opportunity has existed, the ordinary man has been able to attain levels of living never dreamed of before’.¹ Yet this apparent consensus in favour of an equal opportunity objective is largely a mirage. It is achieved only because the concept of equal opportunity is capable of supporting many different interpretations.