(20 April 2017) – The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) recently published a report on “Income inequalities and employment patterns in Europe before and after the Great Recession”.
This report addresses growing concerns about income inequalities in academic and policy debates by offering a comprehensive study of income inequalities during the years of the Great Recession starting in 2008–2009 (income data relating to 2004–2013).
It has the twofold objective of adopting an EU-wide perspective and providing an updated picture of inequalities across different sources of income and in most Member States.
The results show that EU-wide income inequality declined notably prior to 2008, driven by a strong process of income convergence between European countries – but the Great Recession broke this trend and pushed inequalities upwards both for the EU as a whole and across most countries.