IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ira/wpaper/201425.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

“Income inequality in Europe. Analysis of recent trends at the regional level”

Author

Listed:
  • Raul Ramos

    (Faculty of Economics, University of Barcelona)

  • Vicente Royuela

    (Faculty of Economics, University of Barcelona)

Abstract

The evolution of income inequality is becoming a great concern all over the World, particularly since the start of the Great Recession. In this work we analyse the main trends of income inequality in Europe over the last decade, both at the national and regional level. Our results point to a large diversity in inequality patterns, as we observe both increases and decreases in inequality both at the regional and at the national level. The EU2020 Strategy aims achieving an inclusive economic growth, benefitting the largest possible number of people. We briefly analyse the main factors impacting inequality and finally derive several policy implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Raul Ramos & Vicente Royuela, 2014. "“Income inequality in Europe. Analysis of recent trends at the regional level”," IREA Working Papers 201425, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Oct 2014.
    • Handle: RePEc:ira:wpaper:201425
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ub.edu/irea/working_papers/2014/201425.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marrero, Gustavo A. & Rodríguez, Juan G., 2013. "Inequality of opportunity and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 107-122.
    2. David Castells-Quintana & Vicente Royuela, 2014. "Agglomeration, inequality and economic growth," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 52(2), pages 343-366, March.
    3. Greenwood, Jeremy & Jovanovic, Boyan, 1990. "Financial Development, Growth, and the Distribution of Income," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages 1076-1107, October.
    4. Isabell Koske & Jean-Marc Fournier & Isabelle Wanner, 2012. "Less Income Inequality and More Growth – Are They Compatible? Part 2. The Distribution of Labour Income," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 925, OECD Publishing.
    5. Oscar Afonso & Ana Lurdes Albuquerque & Alexandre Almeida, 2013. "Wage inequality determinants in European Union countries," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(12), pages 1170-1173, August.
    6. David Castells-Quintana & Vicente Royuela, 2017. "Tracking positive and negative effects of inequality on long-run growth," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 1349-1378, December.
    7. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Vassilis Tselios, 2010. "Inequalities in income and education and regional economic growth in western Europe," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 44(2), pages 349-375, April.
    8. Christophe Ehrhart, 2009. "The effects of inequality on growth: a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature," Working Papers 107, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    9. Raghuram G. Rajan, 2010. "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9111.
    10. Robinson, Sherman, 1976. "A Note on the U Hypothesis Relating Income Inequality and Economic Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(3), pages 437-440, June.
    11. Oded Galor (ed.), 2009. "Inequality and Economic Development: The Modern Perspective," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12993.
    12. Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson, 2008. "Persistence of Power, Elites, and Institutions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 267-293, March.
    13. Barro, Robert J, 2000. "Inequality and Growth in a Panel of Countries," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 5-32, March.
    14. Isabell Koske & Jean-Marc Fournier & Isabelle Wanner, 2014. "The Distribution Of Labor Income," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Peter Hoeller & Isabelle Joumard & Isabell Koske (ed.), Income Inequality in OECD Countries What are the Drivers and Policy Options?, chapter 3, pages 43-84, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    15. Mr. Chris Papageorgiou & Mr. Subir Lall & Ms. Florence Jaumotte, 2008. "Rising Income Inequality: Technology, or Trade and Financial Globalization?," IMF Working Papers 2008/185, International Monetary Fund.
    16. Mark D. Partridge, 2005. "Does Income Distribution Affect U.S. State Economic Growth?," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 363-394, May.
    17. Pedro Cunha Neves & Sandra Maria Tavares Silva, 2014. "Inequality and Growth: Uncovering the Main Conclusions from the Empirics," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(1), pages 1-21, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Russell Davidson, 2018. "Statistical Inference on the Canadian Middle Class," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-18, March.
    2. Riccardo Crescenzi & Mara Giua, 2018. "One or Many Cohesion Policies of the European Union? On the Diverging Impacts of Cohesion Policy across Member States," SERC Discussion Papers 0230, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    3. Alberto Díaz Dapena & Esteban Fernández Vázquez & Fernando Rubiera Morollón & Ana Viñuela, 2021. "Mapping poverty at the local level in Europe: A consistent spatial disaggregation of the AROPE indicator for France, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 63-81, February.
    4. Omoniyi B. Alimi & David C. Maré & Jacques Poot, 2018. "More Pensioners, Less Income Inequality? The Impact of Changing Age Composition on Inequality in Big Cities and Elsewhere," Advances in Spatial Science, in: Roger R. Stough & Karima Kourtit & Peter Nijkamp & Uwe Blien (ed.), Modelling Aging and Migration Effects on Spatial Labor Markets, chapter 0, pages 133-159, Springer.
    5. Dimitris Ballas & Ilias Thanis, 2022. "Exploring the Geography of Subjective Happiness in Europe During the Years of the Economic Crisis: A Multilevel Modelling Approach," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 105-137, November.
    6. Larraz, Beatriz & Herrera, Marcos, 2016. "Factores condicionantes y dependencia espacial en el grado de concentración salarial en España/Determinants of Wage Inequality in Spain: A Spatial Approach," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 34, pages 597-618, Agosto.
    7. Kuo-Hsing Kuo & Cheng-Te Lee, 2017. "Economic Integration, Growth and Income Distribution," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 59-71, March.
    8. Omoniyi B Alimi & David C Maré & Jacques Poot, 2017. "More pensioners, less income inequality?," Working Papers 17_02, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Castells-Quintana & Raul Ramos & Vicente Royuela, 2015. "Income inequality in European Regions: Recent trends and determinants," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 35(2), pages 123-146, October.
    2. David Castells-Quintana & Vicente Royuela, 2017. "Tracking positive and negative effects of inequality on long-run growth," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 1349-1378, December.
    3. Łukasz Piętak, 2022. "Regional disparities, transmission channels and country's economic growth," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(1), pages 270-306, January.
    4. David Castells-Quintana & Vicente Royuela, 2014. "Agglomeration, inequality and economic growth," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 52(2), pages 343-366, March.
    5. Karen Davtyan, 2016. "Interrelation among Economic Growth, Income Inequality, and Fiscal Performance: Evidence from Anglo-Saxon Countries," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 217(2), pages 37-66, June.
    6. repec:ira:wpaper:201405 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Marta Simões & João Andrade & Adelaide Duarte, 2013. "A regional perspective on inequality and growth in Portugal using panel cointegration analysis," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 427-451, September.
    8. Osmani, S R, 2015. "The Growth-Equity Nexus in Bangladesh: An Analysis of Recent Experience," Bangladesh Development Studies, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), vol. 38(2), pages 1-59, June.
    9. Adelaide Duarte & Marta Simões, 2010. "Regional growth in Portugal: assessing the contribution of earnings and education inequality," GEMF Working Papers 2010-11, GEMF, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.
    10. Bagchi, Sutirtha & Svejnar, Jan, 2015. "Does wealth inequality matter for growth? The effect of billionaire wealth, income distribution, and poverty," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 505-530.
    11. Gründler, Klaus & Scheuermeyer, Philipp, 2018. "Growth effects of inequality and redistribution: What are the transmission channels?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 293-313.
    12. Ionuț Jianu & Marin Dinu & Dragoș Huru & Alexandru Bodislav, 2021. "Examining the Relationship between Income Inequality and Growth from the Perspective of EU Member States’ Stage of Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-16, May.
    13. Ghosh, sudeshna, 2017. "Education Attainment Forecasting and Economic Inequality United States," MPRA Paper 89712, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Cristiano Perugini & Gaetano Martino, 2008. "Income Inequality Within European Regions: Determinants And Effects On Growth," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 54(3), pages 373-406, September.
    15. Donatella, Baiardi & Claudio, Morana, 2015. "Financial deepening and income distribution inequality in the euro area," Working Papers 316, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised 04 Dec 2015.
    16. Kuo-Hsing Kuo & Cheng-Te Lee, 2017. "Economic Integration, Growth and Income Distribution," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 59-71, March.
    17. Enea Baselgia & Reto Foellmi, 2022. "Inequality and growth: a review on a great open debate in economics," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-5, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Sirine MNIF, 2017. "The Impact of Inequality on Growth Driven by Technological Changes: a Panel of Developing Countries," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 8(1), pages 127-140, March.
    19. Joël Hellier & Stéphane Lambrecht, 2013. "Inequality, Growth and Welfare: The Main Links," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Joël Hellier & Nathalie Chusseau (ed.), Growing Income Inequalities, chapter 9, pages 274-311, Palgrave Macmillan.
    20. (River) Huang, Ho-Chuan & Lin, Shu-Chin & Suen, Yu-Bo & Yeh, Chih-Chuan, 2007. "A quantile inference of the Kuznets hypothesis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 559-570, July.
    21. Antonia Díaz & Gustavo A. Marrero & Luis Puch & Jesús Rodríguez-López, 2018. "A Note on Growth, Energy Intensity and the Energy Mix: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis," Working Papers 18.08, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; Globalisation; Technological change; European regions. JEL classification: R11; R12; O15; O3; F61;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ira:wpaper:201425. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alicia García (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feubaes.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.