Bulgaria records the highest inequality
In 2025, Bulgaria has the highest Gini coefficient in the dataset, with a value of 37.7.
Long-term trends • Living conditions
Income inequality in Europe
How evenly income is distributed across countries
Income inequality shows how evenly income is distributed within a society. This page tracks the Gini coefficient of equivalised disposable income across European countries from 2015 to 2025. The Gini coefficient is shown on a scale from 0 to 100, where higher values indicate greater income inequality.
The time series shows how income inequality changed over time: which countries remained structurally more unequal, where inequality declined, and where income distribution became less even. The latest map and table provide a clear snapshot of the most recent year.
Explore the data
Key insights
Lower inequality is concentrated in Central Europe
Slovakia, Czechia, Slovenia and Poland are among the countries with the lowest income inequality in the latest year.
Romania shows the largest decline
Romania recorded the strongest drop between 2015 and 2025, falling from 37.4 to 27.3 on the Gini scale.
Key comparisons
Selected highlights from the income inequality dataset, 2015–2025. Values are shown as the Gini coefficient on a scale from 0 to 100.
Extended analysis
1) Income inequality is measured by the Gini coefficient
The Gini coefficient measures how evenly disposable income is distributed within a country. A value of 0 would mean perfect equality, while a value of 100 would represent maximum inequality. In practice, European countries usually fall within a much narrower range.
The indicator is based on equivalised disposable income, which adjusts household income for household size and composition. This makes the data more comparable across people living in different types of households.
2) The 2025 snapshot shows clear differences between countries
In the latest year, the highest income inequality was recorded in Bulgaria (37.7), Latvia (35.6), Lithuania (35.5), Greece (31.6) and Cyprus (31.2).
At the other end of the ranking, the lowest values were recorded in Slovakia (23.0), Belgium (23.4), Norway (23.7), Czechia (24.0) and Slovenia (24.6). The gap between the highest and lowest values remains substantial.
3) Romania recorded the strongest reduction in inequality
The largest decline between 2015 and 2025 was recorded in Romania, where the Gini coefficient fell from 37.4 to 27.3. Other notable declines were observed in Poland (-5.7 Gini points), Estonia (-3.9), Spain (-3.8) and Portugal (-3.1).
These changes show that income inequality can shift significantly over time. A declining Gini coefficient means that income became more evenly distributed, although it does not necessarily mean that all income groups experienced the same absolute improvement.
4) Increases were generally smaller than declines
The largest increase between 2015 and 2025 was recorded in Luxembourg (+2.0 Gini points), followed by Sweden (+1.9), Finland (+1.9), Hungary (+1.3) and France (+1.2).
Compared with the largest declines, these increases are relatively modest. The broader pattern therefore suggests that several countries with high inequality in 2015 moved closer to the middle of the European distribution by 2025.
5) Low inequality does not automatically mean high income
Income inequality measures the distribution of income within a country, not the overall income level. A country can have relatively low inequality while still having lower average income, or it can be wealthy while maintaining a wider income distribution.
This is why the Gini coefficient should be read alongside indicators such as average salary, GDP per capita, poverty rate and housing affordability. Together, these indicators provide a more complete picture of living conditions.
How to read this indicator
The Gini coefficient measures income inequality on a scale from 0 to 100, where higher values mean greater inequality. It is based on equivalised disposable income, which takes household size and composition into account. The indicator shows how income is distributed within each country, but it does not measure absolute living standards or purchasing power. Iceland and Liechtenstein are not shown because comparable data were not available in the dataset used here. Data for Switzerland are currently available up to 2024.