Opportunity Pluralism and Children's Health

Matteo Bonotti (Monash University, Cardiff University)

This paper (co-authored with Gideon Calder – Swansea University) argues that dominant ways of thinking about the relationship between children’s health and equality of opportunity are flawed. The paper therefore develops a new approach to the analysis of this relationship grounded in Joseph Fishkin’s (2014) theory of ‘opportunity pluralism’. More specifically, the paper argues that we should pluralize our understanding of children’s health, including both what it means for children to be healthy and what kind of opportunities different ways of being healthy may provide children with.