Pay Inequality in Europe 1995-2000: Convergence Between Countries and Stability Inside

This paper measures pay inequality in the EU during the convergence process to the Monetary Union. The decomposability property of Theil's T statistic permits us to construct a three-level hierarchical panel data set of pay inequalities for the years 1995-2000: between and within regions, countries, and for the European continent as a whole. We find a marked pattern of declining pay inequality across Europe for this period, which is due mainly to the rising (initially, negative) position of the United Kingdom and decreasing positive position of Germany.