As of 2021, the countries in Europe with the greatest share of national wealth taken by the top 10 percent of wealthy people were Russia, Turkey, and Hungary, with over two-thirds of wealth in Russia being owned by the wealthiest decile. On the other hand, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Denmark were the countries with the smallest share of national wealth going to the top 10 percent, with more than half of wealth in the Netherlands going to the bottom 90 percent. Ireland, Poland, and Greece stand out, as in these countries the 50 percent of people who own the least wealth in fact have negative net wealth, meaning that the value of their debt is greater than the value of their gross wealth.

As of 2021, the European countries who had the greatest share of their national income taken by the top 10 percent of earners were Turkey, Russia, and Armenia, with high earners in these countries taking home around half of all income. By contrast, the top decile in Slovakia, Iceland, and the Netherlands took home a share of national income almost half as large, at between 26 and 29 percent. On average, the top 10 percent in Europe took home over a third of national income, while the bottom half earned less than a fifth.

The Gini coefficient is a measure of income inequality, where a value of 0 would indicate perfect equality in the income distribution (i.e. everyone earns the same) and a value of 100 would indicate perfect inequality (one person earns everything). The Gini coefficient in both the European Union as a whole, as well as the Eurozone currency area, has been on a downward trajectory since its previous peak in 2014, when it reached a peak of 30.9 in both. As of 2023, the Gini coefficient in the EU and Eurozone has hit a new low, with values of 29.6 and 29.8 respectively, indicating that income inequality has fallen in the blocs over the past decade.

European Union - Inequality of income distribution was 5.07 in December of 2019, according to the EUROSTAT. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for European Union - Inequality of income distribution - last updated from the EUROSTAT on June of 2025. Historically, European Union - Inequality of income distribution reached a record high of 5.22 in December of 2015 and a record low of 4.94 in December of 2010.

As of 2022, Portugal was the EU country with the most respondents agreeing that income differences between citizens have become too great, with almost 95 percent of respondents either agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement. Other countries which had high shares of respondents agreeing with the statement included Bulgaria, Hungary, and Lithuania, all post-communist countries which have experienced sharp upticks in inequality over recent decades. Interestingly, in Germany there is a relatively large divergence between eastern and western Germany on this issue, as the former communist East had the joint highest amount of people agreeing, with almost two-thirds strongly agreeing. On the other hand in the West, 9 percent less of respondents agreed with the statement, illustrating that 33 years since German reunification, there are still significant differences in opinion, especially concerning inequality. The three countries which agree with the statement the least were the three Nordic member states of the EU, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. Their disagreement with the statement is likely related to the tradition of the 'Nordic model' of the welfare state in these countries, which provides comprehensive welfare support to citizens and acts to reduce inequalities. Whilst this model has come under pressure in recent decades, it is still clear tha it has resulted in the citizens of these countries viewing inequality as a much lesser problem than in other EU member states.

The ratio of total income received by the 20 % of the population with the highest income (top quintile) to that received by the 20 % of the population with the lowest income (lowest quintile). Income must be understood as equivalised disposable income.

European Union - Income inequality for older people: Males was 4.19 in December of 2024, according to the EUROSTAT. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for European Union - Income inequality for older people: Males - last updated from the EUROSTAT on June of 2025. Historically, European Union - Income inequality for older people: Males reached a record high of 4.25 in December of 2019 and a record low of 4.02 in December of 2013.

Ratio of household equivalised income of the top 10 per cent of households to the income of the bottom 10 per cent of households.

Ratio calculated using weekly household income adjusted to take account of differences in numbers and ages of residents.

This dataset is one of the Greater London Authority's measures of Economic Fairness. Click here to find out more.

This dataset is one of the Greater London Authority's measures of Economic Development strategy. Click here to find out more.

Cross-national research on the causes and consequences of income inequality has been hindered by the limitations of existing inequality datasets: greater coverage across countries and over time is available from these sources only at the cost of significantly reduced comparability across observations. The goal of the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) is to overcome these limitations. A custom missing-data algorithm was used to standardize the United Nations University's World Income Inequality Database and data from other sources; data collected by the Luxembourg Income Study served as the standard. The SWIID provides comparable Gini indices of gross and net income inequality for 192 countries for as many years as possible from 1960 to the present along with estimates of uncertainty in these statistics. By maximizing comparability for the largest possible sample of countries and years, the SWIID is better suited to broadly cross-national research on income inequality than previously available sources: it offers coverage double that of the next largest income inequality dataset, and its record of comparability is three to eight times better than those of alternate datasets.

This article analyzes the impact of tax policy on income inequality in the European Union (EU). Each EU member-state has adopted a distinct set of fiscal policies. Although most member-states have coordinated their tax systems to promote economic growth, EU countries hold politically divergent views about income inequality and the power of taxation to redress inequality. This research applies linear regression methods incorporating regularization as well as fixed and random effects. Stacking generalization produces a composite model that dramatically improves predictive accuracy while aggregating causal inferences from simpler models. Social contributions, income taxes, and consumption taxes ameliorate inequality. Government spending, however, exacerbates inequality.

European Union - Income inequality for older people: Females was 4.02 in December of 2023, according to the EUROSTAT. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for European Union - Income inequality for older people: Females - last updated from the EUROSTAT on April of 2025. Historically, European Union - Income inequality for older people: Females reached a record high of 4.19 in December of 2019 and a record low of 3.88 in December of 2013.

The indicator is a measure of the inequality of income distribution. It is calculated as the ratio of total income received by the 20 % of the population with the highest income (the top quintile) to that received by the 20 % of the population with the lowest income (the bottom quintile).

Dataset replaced by: http://data.europa.eu/euodp/data/dataset/6lGHMjcpw6T20iNEnvzeOA

The ratio of total income received by the 20 % of the population with the highest income (top quintile) to that received by the 20 % of the population with the lowest income (lowest quintile). Income must be understood as equivalised disposable income.

The ratio of the income of the top 20 percent of the income distribution to that of the bottom 20 percent has fallen been on a downward trend in the European Union since 2015. From its recent high of 5.22 in 2015, the ratio has now fallen to 4.74 in 2022.

The World Income Inequality database is part of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and contains information on income inequality for 189 developed, developing and transition countries.

Euro Area - Inequality of income distribution was 5.02 in December of 2021, according to the EUROSTAT. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for Euro Area - Inequality of income distribution - last updated from the EUROSTAT on June of 2025. Historically, Euro Area - Inequality of income distribution reached a record high of 5.22 in December of 2014 and a record low of 4.86 in December of 2010.

Slovakia - Inequality of income distribution was 3.28 in December of 2024, according to the EUROSTAT. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for Slovakia - Inequality of income distribution - last updated from the EUROSTAT on June of 2025. Historically, Slovakia - Inequality of income distribution reached a record high of 3.93 in December of 2014 and a record low of 3.03 in December of 2020.

Inequality of income distribution S80/S20 income quintile share ratio - EU-SILC survey

Analysis of ‘SIA47 - Income Inequality Rates’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from http://data.europa.eu/88u/dataset/59cb065a-e97e-4849-835c-e94d055dd7a6 on 18 January 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

Income Inequality Rates

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

Economic theory predicts a positive effect of an increase in income inequality on the prevalence of crime, but the international empirical evidence is mixed. For Germany, research on this topic is virtually non-existent. Therefore, I used fixed effect regressions to estimate the effect of a market income inequality proxy on property damages, thefts from motor vehicles, domestic burglaries and assaults in Germany. The models without spatial lags suggest economically small to moderate own-district elasticities between 0.13 and 0.95. The models with spatial lags generally show insignificant own-district estimates, but significant spatial spillovers.

To replicate the results the following files are provided:

Data
* The dataset is provided in .csv (readable across many systems) and .rds format (readable by the open source program R). The names of the files are JBNST_Crime_Inequality_Data.csv and JBNST_Crime_Inequality_Data.rds.
* A description of the dataset is provided in the file Dataset_Description.txt. Details such as the data source of certain variables are described in the main text.

R-Code for replication
* A code description file with instructions (Code_Description.txt).
* A main code file which enables the user to replicate the results (CreateResults.R).
* An auxilliary function (that enables the user to conveniently estimate several models - FunctionToCreateAllSpecificationResults.R).