Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
ES
UK
GR
SP
IT
IR
HU
PO
FR
BEL
GER
AU
LX
CR
SW
DK
NTH
SL
FI
SR
10
15
20 25
Gdp per capita: $1000s
30
35
FIGURE 4.5. The Geography of Income Inequality in the European Union
provide evidence on the economic geography of the union; second, I develop a
qualitative overview of the evolution of social policy in the European Union;
and finally, I present empirical evidence on the actual mechanisms linking
economic geography and institutional choices by analyzing the preferences
of citizens, political parties, and governments on the centralization of redis-
tribution.
The Economic Geography of the Union
In
Chapter 3
, I identified two dimensions of economic geography as particularly
relevant: the geography of income inequality and the geography of labor market
risk, in turn, driven by levels of regional economic specialization and the scope
of cross-regional mobility.
To gain a concrete sense of the distributive tensions emerging from the geog-
raphy of income inequality,
Figure 4.5
plots levels of GDP per capita in 2001
against a standardized measure of income inequality, the Gini coefficient for
disposable income inequality around 2000/2001 as calculated by the Luxem-
bourg Income Study (LIS).
8
8
Note that, because of data limitations, I can only include twenty of the twenty-seven members
of the Union. The countries included are Austria (AU), Belgium (BEL), Czech Republic (CR),
Denmark (DK), Estonia (ES), Finland (FI), France (FR), Germany (GER), Greece (GR), Hungary
