Forty years of inequality in Europe: Evidence from distributional national accounts

a column by Thomas Blanchet, Lucas Chancel and Amory Gethin for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Despite the growing importance of inequalities in policy debates, it is still difficult to compare inequality levels across European countries and to tell how European growth has been shared across income groups.

This column draws on new evidence combining surveys, tax data, and national accounts to document a rise in income inequality in most European countries between 1980 and 2017. It finds that income disparities on the old continent have increased less than in the US and shows that this is essentially due to ‘predistribution’ policies.

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