Understand · Inequality · Social Mobility
You hear about inequality every day. Rarely are you told which kind. There are two: equality of opportunity — a legitimate goal — and equality of outcomes — a promise that has never produced more social mobility. Confusing them means prescribing the wrong cure.
Equality of opportunity asks that every child, regardless of birth, have access to the same tools to build their life: a good school, healthcare, justice that doesn't depend on their family name. Outcomes can differ — they should differ, because they reflect different choices, efforts and preferences. That is fair.
Equality of outcomes wants everyone to end up in the same place. To achieve this, it must constrain those who would go further. It requires an authority to measure outcomes, decide what the right finishing level is, and enforce that alignment. It destroys the incentive to work harder — and it is systematically captured by insiders: those who control the authority, not those it claims to protect.
France spends around 32% of GDP on social protection — among the highest in the world. It has welfare payments, universal health coverage, family allowances, a pay-as-you-go pension system, and minimum income support among the most generous in the OECD. And yet: according to the OECD 2018 report "A Broken Social Elevator?", it takes an average of 6 generations for a family starting at the bottom of the income ladder to reach median income in France.
In Denmark — which redistributes as much but differently — it takes 2. This paradox has an explanation: redistribution to already-poor adults does not change their children's odds. What changes those odds is the quality of the school that child attended at age 4 — when they were still too young to vote, too young to fight, and too early for anyone to pay attention.
James Heckman — 2000 Nobel Prize in Economics — spent his career answering one question: when should you invest to maximise a disadvantaged child's odds? His answer, validated across dozens of 30 to 40-year longitudinal studies: before age 5. The estimated return from a quality early childhood programme is €7 to €13 for every euro spent. A vocational training programme at age 25 returns about €1.
The reason is as neurological as it is economic: cognitive and social skills — focus, perseverance, emotional regulation — are formed essentially between ages 0 and 5. Systems that act early (Finland, Denmark: universal quality childcare since the 1970s) have significantly higher social mobility than those that redistribute later. France invests ten times more per student at university than per child in nursery — the exact inverse of the priority economics recommends.
Milton Friedman proposed the school voucher in 1955 with a simple idea: the state funds the pupil, not the school. Each family receives a fixed-value voucher — say €8,000/year — redeemable at any accredited school, public or private. Good schools attract more pupils and more resources. Bad schools improve or close. The choice, currently reserved for families who can afford rent in the right postcode or private school fees, becomes universal.
In France, the school voucher already exists — but in an invisible and deeply unequal form. Wealthy families pay it through rent: living 150 metres from a good school costs €5,000 to €8,000 more per year according to IPP (2019). They are the ones who "choose" their children's school. Everyone else is assigned. School choice doesn't create inequality — it makes it visible and correctable.
Wanting equality of opportunity is liberal talk for doing nothing. Nordic countries prove redistribution creates mobility. Income inequality is unjust. Quotas correct injustice. Four common charges. Let's look at the data.
France redistributes massively — and its social mobility is lower than Denmark's, Germany's, Australia's. Not because it redistributes too much: because it redistributes at the wrong time. The money goes to already-poor adults. It should go earlier — much earlier — when their child's brain is still forming.
Equality of outcomes is the easiest promise to make and the hardest to keep. It produces compression without mobility, coercion without justice, equality on paper and insiders in reality. Real equality of opportunity is hard, expensive, and takes twenty years to produce its effects. That's why no politician chooses it. That's why it works.