Less rich and more poor. As a consequence of the financial crisis that is affecting Spain since the 2008, not only the income has decreased, but its distribution has become more and more unequal. In 2010, the wage differences among different social classes has reached its all-time high. Spain has one of the highest unemployment rate among European countries, the reduction of salaries and economic performance are the first causes of this tragic record.
The abyss between the rich people incomes and poor ones is the highest since 1995, when Eurostat began collecting data in the European Union on differences among salaries. In 2009, the last year when all member countries gave to it data on their own economic situation, Spain placed itself among the first four nations whit the biggest income unbalance. Only Latvia, Lithuania and Romania went over Spain.
The Eurostat study is based on the Corrado Gini inequality coefficient, where zero corresponds to the ideal situation (perfect equality) and one hundred to perfect inequality. According to these parameters, the Spanish index of inequality was 33,9% not so far away from Italy (31,5%) in 2009.
The Madrid case goes against the tide in Europe, where the Gini coefficient has remained quite stable or decreased (as happened to Bulgaria) in the last years. In an interview given to the newspaper El País, Alfonso Novales, Professor of Economy at Complutense university of Madrid, clarified that does not exist a perfect correspondence between income inequality and the wealth level of a country and that the imbalance between rich and poor “is not an exclusive feature of third world countries”.
The data of the most recent survey on active population, published by the National Institute of Statistics last week, show that in 2011 unemployed are almost five millions (21,52%), 400.000 persons more than last year. Labour shortage hits hard mainly women and data shows that one million and a half hasn’t any income. The number of Spanish who are forced to turn to charity organizations is growing. People that for the first time turn to Caritas were the 30% of the total assisted by the Catholic organization in 2010.
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