Income Inequality in East Europe

This study examines certain aspects of income inequality in East Europe. Studies on income inequality in East Europe have been attempted earlier, such as, Kiuranov (1974), Michal (1973 and 1974), Wiles and Markowski (1971) and Debroy and Kulkarni (1984). Of these, the Kiuranov paper is devoted exclusively to Bulgaria, while the Wiles and Markowski study singles out Poland. Debroy and Kulkarni also consider Poland alone. Michal's papers cover a number of socialist countries of East Europe. All of these studies basically concentrate on computing inequality coefficients for wage and salary and/or per capita income distributions. As shall become apparent, our intention is to go a bit further. A second intention is to make use of the data for recent years, since the afore-mentioned studies, with the exception of the Debroy and Kulkarni one, only use data available up to the early 1970s.