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54 | Zsófia Kollányi the third section) was created, with indicators that are similar to, or partly overlap with the one we use here.' Obviously, there is a trade-off between the clarity and the totality of information. The more data points are presented, the more accurate the picture becomes. At the same time, the increasing amounts of data will also make the information we gain more overwhelming. The disparities we find between individual Member States are potentially enormous, which may offset at the EU level. Also, intertemporal trends can be different not only in scope but also in their long-term trajectory, which may shift over time. As a compromise, I decided to present data at the country level (wherever that was possible) and at different points in time. Another problem is the actual measurement of socio-economic welfare and its distribution. Different ways of measuring shed light on different aspects of welfare and inequalities. Although these are all valid, they could potentially be telling different stories. In the following, I present a handful of such basic measures, aiming to clarify how they are different and why they are significant. We can start with a relative measure of inequality: the income quintile share ratio, or S80/S20 ratio. This captures the difference between the share of total income earned by the bottom quintiles of the population compared with the top quintile, that is, the respective earning levels of the one-fifth of the population with the lowest and the one-fifth with the highest incomes. If this measure is, say, four, then that number means that on the whole, the richest (in terms of income) fifth of the population earn four times as much in total income than the poorest (for example, if the aggregate income of the poorest is 10 per cent of all income in society, then the richest make 40 per cent of all income). It is important to point out that this is a relative measure, which means that if there is an absolute change in the income of these groups but no proportional shift, then these figures will not change either. For example, if previously the bottom group earned 10 units, and the top earned 40 units, and the earnings of each grouped doubled to 20 and 80 units respectively, the S80/S20 will not change, even as the absolute gap between the income of the two groups * The headline indicators of the Social Scoreboard fall into three dimensions. Under “Equal opportunities’, the headline indicators are: early leavers in education; share of people with digital skills; share of NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) young people; gender employment gap; and income inequality based on quintile share ration (S80/S20). The headline indicators of the category of “Fair working conditions” are: employment rate; unemployment rate; long-term unemployment rate; real gross disposable income of households; and per capita increase. The headline indicators under the “Social protection and inclusion” dimension are AROPE (at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion rate, which is based on relative income poverty, the rate of severe material deprivation, and the share of people living in households with low work intensity) for the total population, and AROPE for children; the impact of social transfers on poverty reduction; disability employment gap; housing cost overburden; share of fewer than three children in childcare; and selfreported unmet needs for medical care (Eurostat 20211).
