Is Ireland a particularly unequal country to live in? Well, it depends who you ask, what you measure, and relative to what.
Many developing and emerging economies are vastly more unequal than Ireland, with a narrow oligarchy controlling the bulk of many countries’ wealth and power. For reasons of historical and colonial legacy, Latin America remains particularly unequal. A better point of comparison for Ireland is countries at a similar stage of economic development. The OECD, a group of 34 mainly advanced economies, distinguishes between market income and disposable income, then uses a range of measures for income inequality.
So, how does Ireland compare?
When you look at the distribution of market income, before taxes and benefits are taken into account, using what policy wonks commonly refer to as the GINI index, only Chile is more unequal than Ireland among OECD countries. However, even after years of austerity, taxes and benefits reduce inequality in Ireland by more than in any other OECD country. This means that when you look at disposable income – what people really care about – Ireland is actually less unequal than the OECD average. Not quite Scandanavia, but far from Latin America.
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