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Framed by historical and contemporary discussions, this article reviews the principal foundations of meritocracy and uses the public University of California system as a point of departure for examining the connection between meritocracy and higher education within the context of the United States. Through consideration of four dimensions that inform the concept of meritocracy-merit, distributive justice, equality of opportunity, and social mobility-this review examines the underlying tenets of meritocracy to better understand how higher education functions within it. In The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Daniel Bell (1973) suggested that higher education would become a \"defensive necessity.\" However, if colleges and universities are to serve as instruments for creating and expanding opportunity, then higher education must be more profound than simply being reduced to \"defensive necessity,\" and it is important for researchers to examine more closely the theoretical concerns of meritocracy and the higher education implications. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

Equality of opportunity is about leveling the playing field so that circumstances such as gender, ethnicity, place of birth, or family background do not influence a person's life chances. Success in life should depend on people's choices, effort and talents, not to their circumstances at birth. 'Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean' introduces new methods for measuring inequality of opportunities and makes an assessment of its evolution in Latin America over a decade. An innovative Human Opportunity Index and other parametric and non-parametric techniques are presented for quantifying inequality based on circumstances exogenous to individual efforts. These methods are applied to gauge inequality of opportunities in access to basic services for children, learning achievement for youth, and income and consumption for adults.

China's economic performance over the past 30 years has been remarkable. The report is based on the strong conviction that China has the potential to become a modern, harmonious, and creative high income society by 2030. The report proposes six strategic directions for China's new development strategy: 1) rethinking the role of the state and the private sector to encourage increased competition in the economy; 2) encouraging innovation and adopting an open innovation system with links to global research and development networks; 3) looking to green development as a significant new growth opportunity; 4) promoting equality of opportunity and social protection for all; 5) strengthening the fiscal system and improving fiscal sustainability; and 6) ensuring that China, as an international stakeholder, continues its integration with global markets.

'Microclasses', detailed occupational groups, have recently been suggested as being the basis of research in social stratification; occupations represent 'real' social groups in contrast to the purely 'nominal' categories of either 'big class' schemata or socio-economic status scales. The microclass approach in social mobility research has been applied in a recent paper, the authors claiming to show that a strong propensity exists for intergenerational occupational inheritance, and that such inheritance is the dominant factor in social reproduction and limits equality of opportunity. We model a larger version of the same Swedish dataset as used by these authors. We show: (i) that while with many occupational groups a marked degree of intergenerational inheritance occurs among men, such inheritance is far less apparent among women, and, for both men and women, accounts for less than half of the total association in the occupational mobility table; (ii) that the microclass approach does not deal in a theoretically consistent way with the remaining associational underlying patterns of occupational mobility, since appeal is made to the theoretically alien idea of 'socio-economic closeness'; and (iii) that a standard class approach, modified to account for occupational inheritance, can provide a more integrated understanding of patterns of immobility and mobility alike. We also give reasons for doubting whether it will prove possible to establish a theoretically consistent microclass approach to explaining intergenerational mobility propensities. Finally, on the basis of our empirical results and of the relevant philosophical literature, we argue that the microclass approach is unlikely to be helpful in addressing normative questions of equality of opportunity.

The notion of Equality of Opportunity (EO) has pervaded much of economic and social justice policy over the last half century in conveying a sense of liberation from the circumstances that constrain an individual's ability to achieve it, and it has been a cornerstone of many gender equality programs. However unequivocal pursuit of the so called \"Luck Egalitarianism\" imperative has met with many critics who question why individuals who are blessed with good circumstances would wish to be \"liberated\" from them. This has led to a more qualified pursuit of Equal Opportunity which adds an additional proviso—that no circumstance group should be made worse off by such a policy or decentralized private initiative. Indeed observed practices, by focusing on the opportunities of the poorly endowed in circumstance, do accord with such a qualified Equal Opportunity mandate. Here it is contended that, because of the asymmetric nature of such a policy or initiative, existing empirical techniques will not fully capture the progress made toward an EO goal. Hence a new technique is introduced and employed in examining progress toward such a Qualified Equal Opportunity (QEO) Objective in the context of the educational attainments of Canadian males and females born between the 1920s and the 1970s (In the early part of that century, females did not perform as well as males educationally, and were much more constrained by their parental educational circumstance). A QEO goal is generally found to cohere with the data with females becoming less attached to their parental educational circumstance, and indeed surpassing males in their educational attainments.

Social inequality in modern societies requires legitimation. Yet, while ideals of equality are ascribed a central role in philosophical and public debates about inequality and social justice, less is known about how ordinary people draw on principles of equality in criticizing and justifying social inequalities in the current era of a \"crisis of equality.\" From the perspective of the sociology of critique, this article asks how different social classes refer to beliefs about equality of outcomes and opportunity when criticizing and justifying inequality in contemporary Germany. Based on qualitative interviews with respondents from upper and lower social classes, I show that the ideal of equality is inherently ambivalent and contested: On the one hand, respondents across classes reject the idea of equalizing outcomes but criticize unequal opportunities. However, only upper-class respondents demand greater state intervention to bring about equality of opportunity, indicating that this ideal does not serve as a normative point of reference for the lower classes. At the same time, due to its individualist undertones, the ideal of equality of opportunity also contains a legitimizing potential. Paradoxically, then,ildeals of equality appear to contribute little to the de-legitimation of inequality in contemporary Germany.

Should a liberal constitution constrain the racially discriminatory actions of state as well as nonstate employers? This essay answers in the affirmative, arguing that once we take seriously the right to nondiscrimination on the basis of race in terms of employment, we realize that such a constitution must constrain the actions of both. In doing so, this essay draws from John Rawls's four-stage sequence, a sequence that suggests one way philosophical principles translate into constitutional design. A Theory of Justice is the go-to theory for a wide range of political issues from a perspective of liberal theory, but scholars have paid less attention to it and comparative constitutional law. I take up this neglected inquiry by focusing on the distinction between the horizontal and vertical effect of a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of race in matters of employment. My analysis draws from the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. A vertical effect constrains state power: a right to nondiscrimination is violated only when a state or public body discriminates on the basis of race. A horizontal effect constrains nonstate actors: a private employer may violate rights by discriminating on the basis of race. I argue that, in line with the South African Constitution, Rawls importantly adopts a horizontal effect of the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of race by ensuring formal equality of opportunity. His theory of justice suggests that a liberal constitution ought to constrain the racially discriminatory actions of both state and nonstate (private) employers. This, in turn, represents an important response to racism that occurs in the private sphere.

Urban research has increasingly acknowledged the significance of the social and spatial composition of schools in the broader socio-spatial dynamics of cities overall. With increasingly marketised education systems, parental choice of school is a key mechanism affecting wider urban processes such as gentrification. Most research into school choice in cities concentrates on the dynamics of choice (how and what parents say they choose). Fewer studies deal with the relationship between choice and the subsequent allocation of pupils to schools. This paper reports the findings of an international systematic review of the connections between parental choice and pupil allocation in school choice systems across the globe. We find that school choice is associated with higher levels of segregation of pupils from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds between schools. This finding is consistent across all types of choice mechanism, in different countries and cities, and across choice systems that have been in place for different lengths of time. The reasons behind the observed relationship are, however, highly localised and contextual, including particularities of the choice mechanism, social composition of neighbourhoods and mix of school types in a city. Increases in between-school segregation may lead to schools being more homogeneous in their social composition, with broader implications for social cohesion and educational inequalities in cities. Relating the findings to the broader urban school literatures, we suggest that scales and geographies of allocation are critical in understanding the dilemmas and dynamics of choice, the resultant inequalities, and any proposed interventions or solutions to reduce these inequalities. 城市研究越来越认可学校的社会和空间构成在城市整体更广泛的社会空间动态中的重要性。随着教育系统日益市场化，家长选择学校是影响更广泛的城市进程(如绅士化)的关键机制。大多数关于城市择校的研究都集中在择校的动态上(父母说他们选择什么以及如何选择)。很少有研究涉及选择和随后分配给学校的学生之间的关系。本文报告了一项关于全球学校选择系统中父母选择和学生分配之间联系的全球系统调查的结果。我们发现，学校选择与学校之间来自不同社会经济和种族背景的学生的较高隔离程度相关。这一发现在不同国家和城市的所有类型的择校机制之间，以及在存在时间长度各不相同的择校制度之间保持了一致。然而，观察到的关联背后的原因是高度地方化和情境化的，包括择校机制的特殊性、街区的社会构成和城市中各学校类型的构成。学校间隔离的加剧可能导致学校的社会构成更加同质化，对城市的社会凝聚力和教育不平等产生更广泛的影响。将研究结果与更广泛的城市学校文献联系起来，我们认为分配的规模和地理位置对于理解择校的困境和动态、由此产生的不平等、以及减少这些不平等的任何提议的干预措施或解决方案至关重要。

(1) Background: We aim to measure the urban-rural inequality of opportunity in healthcare in China based on the theory of Equality of Opportunity (EOp). (2) Methods: Following the compensation principle, we establish a decomposition strategy for the fairness gap, which we use for the measurement of the inequality of opportunity in urban-rural healthcare utilization. We then use China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data from 1997 to 2006 to calculate the fairness gap. (3) Results: Empirical analysis using CHNS data shows that the ratio of the fairness gap to the directly observed average urban-rural difference in healthcare was 1.167 for 1997–2000 and 1.744 for 2004–2006. The average urban-rural difference observed directly from original statistical data may have underestimated the degree of this essential inequity. (4) Conclusions: Our findings suggest that upgrading urban-rural reimbursement ratios may not be sufficient in eliminating the inequality of opportunity in healthcare utilization between urban and rural residents. Within the context of an urban-rural dualistic social structure and widening of the urban-rural income gap, a shift to a pro-disadvantaged policy will be a more effective approach in promoting equality of opportunity in healthcare.