Oldal 59 [59]
OCR
Inequalities and Social Europe | 57 Considering the income figures, we can see that the impact of the financial crisis differed among countries. Typically, the populations of the UK, Ireland, the Baltic states, and some Southern European countries (Spain, Greece, Malta) suffered a drop in their before-transfers income in the years following the crisis, while in the countries of continental Europe and Scandinavia the crisis merely led to a stop in the further rises of people’s income - which can, of course, also be a painful experience pending the conditions. Looking at the trends in incomes and income inequalities - which we posited as being connected to the macro-economic crisis - one also needs to examine how this crisis affected main macroeconomic indicators, specifically GDP and employment. Figure 6 presents average GDP growth figures for EU member countries individually for two separate periods: 2008 to 2013, and 2014 to 2019. In the second period, on average, all countries experienced positive growth, while in the first period directly following the crisis, nearly half of them reported a drop in their Gross Domestic Product. How a global crisis affects an individual country is determined by several macroeconomic factors, including general economic structure, and the strength and openness of the economy. Also, the effect of a drop in the GDP is likely to affect personal incomes differently. Juxtaposing the results in Figure 6, respectively, we find that while in most countries the drop in the GDP also resulted in declining incomes, there are exceptions like Italy, Portugal, Finland, and Hungary. Also, in some cases incomes dropped even though there was no concomitant drop in the GDP decline, such as in the case of the UK. It also needs to be noted, however, that these GDP growth averages offset the year-to-year details. For example, the fact that in the UK in 2009 - the hardest year of the crisis for many countries - GDP fell by more than 4 per cent. And while in other countries, for example in Germany, which experienced an almost 6 per cent decline in the same year, this was offset by a relatively robust recovery and rising GDP growth rates in the subsequent years (4.18 per cent in 2010 and 3.96 per cent in 2011), in the UK the GDP growth rate was only 2.07 per cent in 2010 and a mere 1.28 per cent in 2011. This was enough to yield a positive average value for the period from 2009 to 2013, but it nevertheless resulted in radically different social consequences. Once again, these diverging outcomes are deeply rooted in the differing structures and situations of the respective economies, as well as the distinct policy approaches applied at the national level. For employment, I present the employment rate rather than the rate of unemployment. I do so because unemployment figures fail to capture discouraged workers and others who quit the labour market for reasons that are not independent of the economic situation. Also, Figure 7 presents the relevant values for two individual years (2009 and 2019), along with average values for a selected three years’ period. More detailed data at our disposal have shown that these three years marked the peak of the crisis with respect to employment.
