Chapter 9 The EU-wide Earnings Distribution

Abstract

This chapter studies the distribution of labour earnings among employees within the EU using data from Wave 2007-1 of the EU-SILC. The ranking of countries by median full-time equivalent monthly gross earnings shows Eastern European nations at the bottom and Luxembourg at the top; earnings differences are sizeable, both across and within countries. Taking the euro area and the EU-25 as a whole, inequality is higher when earnings are measured in euro at market exchange rates than at purchasing power parities. Unsurprisingly, the wage distribution is narrower in the euro area than in the EU-25, which includes the poorer Eastern European countries joining the Union in 2004. The higher inequality observed for the EU-25 is largely attributable to between-country differences, which in turn reflect differences in returns to individual attributes more than in workforce composition.

Citation

Brandolini, A., Rosolia, A. and Torrini, R. (2012), "Chapter 9 The EU-wide Earnings Distribution", Bishop, J.A. and Salas, R. (Ed.) Inequality, Mobility and Segregation: Essays in Honor of Jacques Silber (Research on Economic Inequality, Vol. 20), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 205-235. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1049-2585(2012)0000020012