EU membership enjoys strong approval in new member states largely thanks to the economic firepower they have gained. Euronews Business takes a closer look at the GDP growth story in the new accession states since the bloc’s historic enlargement in 2004.
As an (important?) side note: Europe is among the region with the highest equality, together with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Philippine, Papua New Guinea. Of course, there is a lot room for improvement, but inequality has not risen in the last 20 or so years - unlike in countries like Russia, China, India, where the gap between the richest and the poor has widen significantly.
Addition: Here is the data - https://wid.world/world/#shweal_p99p100_z/US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB;WO-PPP;QE-PPP;XR-PPP/last/eu/k/p/yearly/s/false/12.912/100/curve/false/region
Thats nice, but also largely due to the fact that Europe has been industrialized much longer. We already had the wealth inequality going before
Can you elaborate?
Well historically the industrial revolution began in GB and then the rest of the “west” as we know it today. All under existing structures of old wealth such as monarchies and nobility, eventually giving birth to capitalism.
The countries mentioned above were going through that same process only some decades later.
China is a great example because they are so thorough and totalitarian in their societal progression, they essentially forced through all this change in just a few decades and there is a lot of statistical information available that you could have a look at illustrating the process of an emerging middle class and their ultra rich class along their economical development.
Where are these statistics about China?
Because it’s not worth engaging with this person I just copy paste my answer to the other place where they posted this.
Thanks for linking a source but this is a misleading interpretation, please don’t try to argue with data if you don’t know how to interpret it.
You need to look at e.g. the top 10%, middle 40% and bottom 50% to get a proper idea. And then look at it country by country because the scales don’t match. Yes, the USA are extremely inequal, I think back to like 1913 level in 2013 or something like that iirc, so if you put them on a plot with e.g. France, France will look great.
But if you look at France alone you get a different picture and inequality is rising again since the 80s. Here’s an article by a French economist with research focus on inequality which cites the same data: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2025/09/24/global-inequality-in-historical-perspective-part-1/
OP didn’t even mention the US, though. I’m not sure what you’re arguing against.
You obviously did not look at the data they used as source
I actually did. I have nits to pick with the map, but the conclusion that Russia has a lot and Europe has (relatively) little is well known. And again, what does the US have to do with it?
Reading the thread back again, you’re probably right that inequality in Europe has grown somewhat, if that was your main point.
Edit: And your source is excellent, by the way. Very interesting. Picketty delivers.
The US is so inequal that anything else on that plot is impossible to interpret. That’s why the US is relevant to mention here. Although this does not apply exclusively to the US.
OP then mentions that inequality has not risen in the last 20 years in Europe which is wrong, but not visible in the plot,
And I mean it’s not even wrong in a sense that there is different ways to see it, it’s just wrong in a way that OP is actually spreading false information.
Regarding Piketty yeah I hope some people actually read that, glad you did!
Well, I guess in any case there’s no doubt now.