Richard Exell
The latest issue of Social Trends shows that the UK is a very unequal country by European standards – we have levels of inequality that are normally found in the EU’s poorer Mediterranean and Balkan members.
Social Trends provides a comparison for Gini coefficients (the Gini coefficient is a commonly used yardstick, and it measures inequality across the income distribution) in 2007, which is the most recent year for which there is comparable data available. Social Trends provides a comparison for Gini coefficients (the Gini coefficient is a commonly used yardstick, and it measures inequality across the income distribution) in 2007, which is the most recent year for which there is comparable data available.
The UK has the 8th worst level of inequality of the EU’s 27 members; of countries that joined the EU in the 20th century, only Greece and Portugal are worse:
| Country | Gini |
| Romania | 38 |
| Portugal | 37 |
| Bulgaria | 35 |
| Latvia | 35 |
| Greece | 34 |
| Lithuania | 34 |
| Estonia | 33 |
| United Kingdom | 33 |
| Italy | 32 |
| Poland | 32 |
| Ireland | 31 |
| Spain | 31 |
| Cyprus | 30 |
| Germany | 30 |
| Netherlands | 28 |
| Luxembourg | 27 |
| Austria | 26 |
| Belgium | 26 |
| Finland | 26 |
| France | 26 |
| Hungary | 26 |
| Malta | 26 |
| Czech Republic | 25 |
| Denmark | 25 |
| Slovakia | 24 |
| Slovenia | 23 |
| Sweden | 23 |
Things don’t have to be this way – thirty years ago, the UK’s Gini coefficient was at the level typical of Europe’s more egalitarian countries. The deterioration took place in the 1980s, when policies were shifting income and power from the poor to the rich – another round of cuts biased against the poor risks taking this country to a new low point.
Comment made by Tokyo Gaijin on Jul 5th 2010 at 2:37 pm:
Richard
It’s not clear what point you’re making here.
From my reading on the Gini index most research shows that the ideal level for a developed economy is between 25 and 40, so 33 doesn’t look like much of a problem.
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Comment made by Owen Tudor on Jul 5th 2010 at 10:03 pm:
Tokyo, it’s true that on a global scale, most of Europe is what the Chinese call “the harmonious society”, regardless of where on the Gini scale we lie. The whole of Europe is relatively equal compared, say, to sub-Saharan Africa, or South East Asia. But there is nevertheless considerable difference between the level of equality in, say, Denmark and Romania (Denmark has high global levels of productivity, and, to the extent that you can measure these things, happiness. Romania doesn’t.) Richard’s figures show that on a European scale, we’re more like Romania than Denmark. It’s much more realistic to compare ourselves with the rest of Europe than the poverty-afflicted global south, and he is showing that we could be doing so much better than we are.
Comment made by Tokyo Gaijin on Jul 9th 2010 at 5:03 am:
I still see this as a pointless, meaningless comparison.
Simply measuring inequality without looking at the absolute values tells us very little. For example if the poor became poorer, but the rich become more poorer the inequality measure would get “better”, but few would consider this a desirable result. On the other hand if everybody gets richer but, within certain limits (which the UK is well within as per my previous comment), the rich get more richer, the inequality measure would get ‘worse” but the reality is the opposite – everybody’s better off.
There is little evidence to show the level of inequality itself has any tangible, measurable, results. So it might be useful fodder for the “it’s unfair” brigade but it reality it matters little.