Income, Wealth, Employment, and Beyond
This chapter looks at trends in 10 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, exploring both convergence between these countries and the centre of the European Union on the one hand and comparative inequality trends within some of the CEE economies on the other. Time trends are presented from the beginning of the 1990s until the most recent available year. The aim is to explore patterns of income convergence and inequality developments experienced during and after the transition from non-democratic regimes and centrally planned economies to competitive markets and representative democracies. Attention is paid to between-country similarities and dissimilarities of the paths taken, attempting to find out whether homogeneity or heterogeneity dominates between the observed countries, both in relation to trends and results.