This thesis is concerned with a possible answer to the question of why we should care about inequality: children. A child can no less choose its parents than it can choose its gender or ethnicity. One cannot fault a child for their choice of school, lack of resources or absence of role models....

Strategic incentives may lead to inefficient and unequal provision of public services. A prominent example is school admissions. Existing research shows that applicants "play the system" by submitting school rankings strategically. We investigate whether applicants also play the system by...