GINI Policy Paper 3: Time series and cross country variation of income inequalities in Europe on the medium run: are inequality structures converging in the past three decades?

The paper provides an analysis of income inequality developments over the past 30 years in a joint set of the EU countries and OECD (containing specific analyses of income distribution changes in Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea and the US), with concise synthesis of the major findings of within-country and cross-country comparison of inequality trends. In addition to the objective indicators of income distribution and of poverty, available attitude data are surveyed to portray country profiles with respect to inequality and its perception and evaluation. This latter analysis is available for 25 EU member states. In the conclusive parts, the paper also gives an indication of the policy implications, with special references given to current EU debates about policy coordination in monitoring and reporting social changes in the Member States.