Skip to main content
Knowledge4Policy
Knowledge for policy

Supporting policy with scientific evidence

We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.

  • Publication | 2020

Income distributions in the EU: gains, losses and convergence

Composite Indicators
Income distributions in the EU: gains, losses and convergence - Cover
(@©EC)

Headlines

  • Between 2007 and 2014 income levels across Europe converged, to the apparent advantage of the poor. However, this convergence was mostly due to the `catching up' process in Central and Eastern Europe.
  • Within all three major geographic regions of the EU, income growth was weakest at the lower end of the income distribution.
  • As a result of EU-wide and region-specific changes, income levels in Southern Europe first converged towards and then diverged from the EU-wide income distribution, while those in Central and Eastern Europe steadily converged towards it.
  • Regarding income inequality, distributions of income in Central and Eastern and Southern Europe became very similar, both to each other and to the distribution of income in the EU as a whole; however, the gap between those geographic regions, and between them and the EU, remains sizeable in terms of income levels.