Equal opportunities in school choice settings

Equal opportunities in school choice settings | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Equal opportunities in school choice settings Domenico Moramarco, Umutcan Salman This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-6613384/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted 9 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract We introduce a novel notion of fairness, inspired by the equality of opportunity literature, into the school choice setting, endowed with a measure of the match qualities between students and schools. In this framework, fairness considerations are made by a social evaluator based on the match quality distribution. We impose the standard notion of stability as a minimal desideratum and study matchings that satisfy our notion of fairness and an efficiency requirement based on aggregate match quality. To overcome some of the identified incompatibilities, we relax the fairness and efficiency definitions, and embed them in a family of linear social welfare functions. We then propose an algorithm that maximize social welfare over the set of stable matchings. Finally, we illustrate our approach with an application to the allocation of Italian high school students in the 2021/2022 academic year. JEL: C78, D63 school choice equality of opportunity stability fairness match quality Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted Editorial decision: Revision requested 05 Jan, 2026 Reviews received at journal 25 Dec, 2025 Reviews received at journal 12 Sep, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 05 Aug, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 14 Jul, 2025 Reviewers invited by journal 14 Jul, 2025 Editor assigned by journal 13 May, 2025 Submission checks completed at journal 13 May, 2025 First submitted to journal 07 May, 2025 You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-6613384","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":485341240,"identity":"222fbc62-ab29-4562-bdb6-0c5dd50ce9aa","order_by":0,"name":"Domenico Moramarco","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA/UlEQVRIiWNgGAWjYDCCAyDCAEWIGShmAMTMxGthS4BqwaHnAKYQjwFUHLsWvuPdiY8LCuzkGMQOH/vwM8cun7+955t0QcEdeQZ2fizmMTBInjm72XiGQbIxg3Ra8szebcmWM86c3SY9w+CZYQMOhxncyN0mzWNwILFBOseYgXcbs4GBBFjkMCMeLdt/w7Qw/t1WD9SS8wykxR6fLcwwLcy82w6DtLCBtCTi0gLyC1BBsjEb0C/MstuOG0icOWZszWPwLLmNmdkAmxa+470bP/P8sZPjl04+zPh2W7UBf3vzw9s8f+7Y9vMffIDVGhhgI0JkFIyCUTAKRgGxAADESVgu0aoMcQAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==","orcid":"","institution":"University of Bari Aldo Moro","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Domenico","middleName":"","lastName":"Moramarco","suffix":""},{"id":485341242,"identity":"686d27c6-833b-4125-9c63-b351eab6a73b","order_by":1,"name":"Umutcan Salman","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Padua","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Umutcan","middleName":"","lastName":"Salman","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-05-07 15:23:28","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-6613384/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6613384/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":86925404,"identity":"52c27495-1a33-4f43-a6b7-0f309acb9233","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-07-17 08:30:52","extension":"pdf","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":459810,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-6613384/v1_covered_46ee9616-51a0-4bdd-ad0d-67daf68e9a1f.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Equal opportunities in school choice settings","fulltext":[],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":false,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":false,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":true,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":true,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"the-journal-of-economic-inequality","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"joei","sideBox":"Learn more about [The Journal of Economic Inequality](http://link.springer.com/journal/10888)","snPcode":"10888","submissionUrl":"https://submission.nature.com/new-submission/10888/3","title":"The Journal of Economic Inequality","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"em","reportingPortfolio":"Springer Hybrid","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false},"keywords":"school choice, equality of opportunity, stability, fairness, match quality","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-6613384/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6613384/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eWe introduce a novel notion of fairness, inspired by the equality of opportunity literature, into the school choice setting, endowed with a measure of the match qualities between students and schools. 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