Inequality of opportunities at early ages: evidence from Chile

Abstract

This paper examines inequality of opportunity for Chilean children starting from an early age. It uses a psychometric test designed to assess children’s receptive vocabulary (PPVT), height, and weight as opportunity measures. We consider traditional circumstances such as parental income and educational level, but improve on the previous literature including mother’s cognitive skills in our assessment. Our results indicate that Chilean children do not exhibit significant differences in height or weight either as newborns or at two to four years old. Nevertheless, there is evidence of inequality of opportunities for vocabulary skills. Maternal cognitive ability is the greatest contributor. Finally, the evidence also suggests that inequality of opportunity on vocabulary skills increases with age.