Comparative Analysis of the Dynamics of Inter-and Intra-Country Social Inequalities Among EU Countries in 2000-2022

Inequality between and within countries continues to be one of the actively discussed problems of the modern world economy. The paper investigates social inequality of two types (inter-country and intra-country) in EU countries in 2000 - 2022 in order to analyse the main trends in the studied phenomenon. The EU countries were divided into 3 study groups: North, South, East. Various economic and social indicators were analysed for them. The study revealed that inter-country inequality (according to the average values of per capita income of the groups) in the EU modified in structure and continued to grow, within the groups the dynamics of income varied depending on the group. Behavioural parameters and the quality of human capital showed the dominance of the North group over the others. Intra-country inequality, stable in its dynamics, was examined before and after taxation: in the first case, the income distribution of the poor, middle class and rich (10th decile) was almost the same for the three groups; after taxation, the dependence of the degree of income redistribution on the established taxation system was revealed. It was found that the taxation scale serves as an effective tool for income equalisation. The study attempted to model the dependence of the income share of the 10th decile before and after taxes for the three groups (significant results were obtained for the "North" group): the positive dependence of the increase in the share of the 10th decile on the acceleration of the country's economic growth rate has been established, and the degree of income redistribution in the Group has been reflected. The paper establishes that the dynamics of inequality is influenced by high growth rates of the "East" group, effective policy of the "North", more difficult passage of the global financial and debt crises, as well as COVID-19 pandemics in the "South" group. Keywords: social inequality, 21st century, income redistribution, SDG 10, income dynamics