However, the empirical results suggest that an equity-increasing use of educational resources may be obtained through policies that provide the relevant signals to schools and teachers: for instance, providing financial incentives to qualified teachers may prove to be an effective tool for targeting disadvantaged students or areas. Thirdly, this work fills a gap in empirical research by providing cross-country (as opposed to country-specific) evidence on the importance of early intervention policy for attenuating intergenerational socio-economic inequalities in educational opportunities. It suggests that childcare and early intervention policies could be effective to reach this objective. Finally, the cross-country analysis attempts to uncover the role played by social and labour-market policies in influencing equality of educational opportunities, given the positive relationship between intergenerational and cross-sectional (income) inequality.