EU household real income per capita up 22% since 2004

Posted by andrewstetsenko 19 hours ago

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Comment by alecco 15 hours ago

Since 2004?? If anything, it's a terrible statistic.

Meanwhile, since 2010:

> House prices across the EU have soared by 48% between 2010 and 2023, according to Eurostat, while rents increased 22% over the same period. By 2023, nearly one in 10 people were spending 40% or more of their disposable income on housing, including 29% of the population in Greece, 15% in Denmark and 13% in Germany.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/15/europe-housi... (Published Mon 15 Dec 2025)

Comment by ben_w 13 hours ago

Rent increasing by the same percentage as income per capita is what I'd expect by default.

Inequality in rent-to-earnings is also a problem, though without knowing what it used to be I can't say if that has gotten worse or if it was always that unequal. Vimes Boots etc.

The Guardian article links to https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/h... which shows the % of people in overcrowded homes has gone down, and the % in under-occupied homes has gone up, and that 25% of the EU population's housing has had its insulation improved in the last 5 years.

So, quality has gone up despite the same *average* fraction of income being spent. But I still don't know the distribution, the poorest may indeed be worse off, averages (even when combined with standard deviations) hide a lot, as anyone who has seen the Datasaurus dozen will know.

Comment by bryanlarsen 9 hours ago

You're quoting nominal increases, the linked article is real income, aka after inflation.

Your link says inflation was 36% between 2010 and 2023, so the real increase in housing prices was 12% and rents declined 14% in real inflation adjusted terms.

Comment by KellyCriterion 15 hours ago

++1

Comment by ekjhgkejhgk 18 hours ago

Poorer countries like Romania and Poland benefited more than richer countries like Austria and Luxemburg (exception were intermediate countries like Greece and Italy that piled on too much debt).

This was planned (called EU convergence), and is a victory of bureaucratic planning. Whatever you think of the goals or methods, I think it's awe inspiring that an organization can plan and follow through with a plan on multi-decade time horizon.

Comment by rvba 13 hours ago

That's how the maths works though. If you are a farmer in Africa you buy one scythe for 10 dollars and your productivity increases by 100%

If you are a farmer in Denmark you buy the second tractor and your productity increases by 20%.

Also nothing was planned.

If rhis was planned then USA losing and China winning was planned too. Just globalization meaning everyone goes towards optimum

Comment by ekjhgkejhgk 12 hours ago

> Just globalization meaning everyone goes towards optimum

You're a free market fundamentalist.

This isn't an insult. I'm describing what I see. Someone who says "if you don't plan things will turn out the best possible" is a free market fundamentalist.

Comment by rvba 11 hours ago

I am not a fundamentalist. I describe what happens - world is converging due to market forces.

Also free market? China is for example not open - you cannot fully own a company there as an investment.

EU market is converging towards optimum - and countries like Poland are still at 50% of level of Germany

Comment by ekjhgkejhgk 9 hours ago

> I am not a fundamentalist.

> Just globalization meaning everyone goes towards optimum

Comment by rayiner 15 hours ago

Almost all the countries that grew faster than the U.S. during this timeframe were former soviet-aligned countries that had artificially depressed economies due to communism. I’m not sure you can chalk up their growth to the EU.

Moreover, I’m not sure Germany, France, etc., voted to join the EU under the promise to sacrifice their own growth—they have significantly underperformed the U.S. over this time frame—to facilitate the development of eastern europe.

Comment by ekjhgkejhgk 15 hours ago

> Moreover, I’m not sure Germany, France, etc., voted to join the EU under the promise to sacrifice their own growth—they have significantly underperformed the U.S. over this time frame—to facilitate the development of eastern europe.

Can you provide evidence that Germany, France, sacrificed their own growth? Unless you know something that I don't, what I see is that you're imagining a zero sum situation which is well known doesn't apply to things like markets. That they underperformed the US isn't not evidence of that. Germany and France underperformed the US in the time period, and in the last 100 years too.

Comment by rayiner 14 hours ago

That's how I understood your thesis: "This was planned (called EU convergence), and is a victory of bureaucratic planning."

If you don't think Germany and France sacrificed their own growth, what exactly do you think "EU convergence" means?

Comment by ekjhgkejhgk 13 hours ago

> If you don't think Germany and France sacrificed their own growth, what exactly do you think "EU convergence" means?

Convergence doesn't refer to growth rates approaching, but incomes (per capita) appproaching.

It doesn't mean that the richer countries grow slower than otherwise. They might grow the same, or faster.

The claim is something along the lines of:

Without planned convergence: country G grows 2% per year starting from income of 30k/capita and country P grows %1 per year starting from income to 10k/capita. Country P will never approach country G in income/capita.

With planned convergence: country G grows 2% per year starting from income of 30k/capita and country P grows %4 per year starting from income to 10k/capita. The two countries's income per capita will converge.

Economics and counterfactuals are devilishily complicated subjects, but claim isn't complicated.

Comment by rayiner 8 hours ago

But what does any of that have to do with the EU or bureaucratic planning? It seems to me like Poland was poised to grow quickly as it transitioned from communism to capitalism with or without the EU.

Comment by immibis 14 hours ago

Why should I only grow 1.8% while you grow 2%, when it would be much fairer if we both grew 0%?

Comment by ekjhgkejhgk 13 hours ago

It's clear that you have no clue economics, as hinted by the comical numbers that you chose to pick for your disengenious example.

Comment by alde 15 hours ago

Soviet-aligned countries that didn't join the EU did much worse than those that did.

Comment by lbreakjai 14 hours ago

This is not a zero sum game. Germany should have benefited tremendously from Poland getting much richer.

Comment by ekjhgkejhgk 13 hours ago

Yes, in fact I've heard people argue the opposite point, that EU benefits Germany more than the rest of the EU countries. The argument starts from Germany being more competitive than most EU countries. Protection from external trade is usually needed so that an industry can home brew and reach competitive or almost-competitive state, and trade barriers are then removed to keep improving against competition. But with competition in place you can't go from zero to one in established industries. The result, the argument goes, is that Germany ends up owning entire industries within the EU.

But some people cannot conceive that some arrangements can be win-win.

Comment by rayiner 15 hours ago

The U.S. is up 39% since that time: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0 [EDIT: Didn’t see it was disposable real income per capita. That figure is 39% not 30%.][1]

The only countries that outperformed the U.S. were former soviet-aligned countries, Malta, and Iceland.

[1] I don’t know if the Fed disposable income calculation accounts for everything the EU calculation does, specifically the value of free services. European growth could be higher if their welfare states and tax burdens have gotten relatively larger during this time.

Comment by jve 15 hours ago

Are you talking about income or real income?

> Adjusted gross disposable income of households per capita in real terms is the total amount of money households have available for spending and saving after subtracting income taxes and pension contributions, plus the individual goods and services (such as education and health services) received free of charge from government and non-profit institutions serving households. Real means that its nominal value is adjusted for price increases (by the deflator of household actual final consumption expenditure). Per capita indicates that the value was divided by the total population.

Comment by hcurtiss 15 hours ago

That’s a pretty fuzzy number. How do they value or even allocate the value of those free services?

Comment by 15 hours ago

Comment by tzs 15 hours ago

Wouldn't this one, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N , "Real Median Household Income", be a batter match to EU household real income per capita?

Comment by rayiner 14 hours ago

The "real median household income" is a per-household number (divided by number of households), while the "EU household real income per capita" is a per-capita number (divided by number of people). Household sizes are different and shrinking at different rates. Also, I think the EU figure is an average, not a median.

As I noted above, the Fed figure may not include imputed income from social benefits. So if social benefits are increasing as a share of European incomes, the comparison above may understate the EU's growth relative to the US.

Comment by 14 hours ago

Comment by tonyedgecombe 15 hours ago

If you take away tech then the US looks just as sick as Europe.

Comment by andsoitis 15 hours ago

> If you take away tech

why would you do that?

Comment by ben_w 13 hours ago

For measurement?

Because they're so big they drag the mean up. It's like, people sometimes say the USA can't have good public transport because its big and empty, but if Alaska and Nevada stopped being part of the USA the official population density would increase despite nobody getting closer.

As a fact, to cause their removal from the economy and not just modify reporting to understand the economy better?

1. Dutch disease.

2. They might choose to take themselves out of the USA if they decide they're big enough to be able to choose not to submit to US laws, just like some have relocated from CA to TX.

3. There's potential for US or non-US courts to demand breakup or limitations on economic rent extraction (e.g. App Store fees) for monopoly/market abuse reasons.

And to stop them getting so big that #2 is possible. Cyberpunk may appeal to some business leaders, but I don't think any politicians like it.

Comment by tonyedgecombe 14 hours ago

Because most people don't work for those big tech companies.

Comment by immibis 14 hours ago

Same reason anyone removes outliers from any analysis. The average person eats zero spiders per year, if we don't count Spiders Georg. He is not an average person. We count him separately from the average people.

The USA is sick. It's just lucky to have a tech bubble that counteracts its sickness. By analysing minus the tech bubble, we can see that tech is the only thing holding the economy above water.

Comment by andsoitis 4 hours ago

> The USA is sick.

What do you think is the illness?

Comment by cindyllm 4 hours ago

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Comment by graemep 17 hours ago

That is pretty disastrous. 22% over 20 years is 1% per year.

A few countries have done spectacularly well, but others have done incredibly badly (two have an actual decline over a 20 year period!).

Comment by _s_a_m_ 16 hours ago

Yep, and that's in the aggregate. So some sectors got probably worse. Germany also has since forever now a domestic demand crisis. Austerity since the 90s and another boost in 2010 (Agenda 2010). Forced it on entire EU and hardcore on Greece, from which they never recovered.

Comment by pjc50 16 hours ago

UK seems basically flat: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/times...

I can't find corresponding US numbers?

Comment by graemep 15 hours ago

That shows a 21% increase.

However, its not the same number at all. it is median real disposable income per head (person), whereas the the EU number is mean real income per household.

I think it is probably correct to say the UK has broadly speaking performed about as well as obvious peers such as France and Germany over the last 20 years, but its not greater performance for any of them.

Comment by frikskit 16 hours ago

By “flat” you mean “similar” ?Because your link shows approx 22% increase.

Comment by pjc50 16 hours ago

.. since 1955. You need to adjust the date range to match.

Comment by frikskit 16 hours ago

No. Since 2004. Since 1955 it’s way more than 22%.

Comment by Yujf 16 hours ago

If I read this correctly it is (total household income) / population.

This means that if countries get older, they get less working people so this number drops. This makes it difficult to draw conclusions.

Comment by tlb 16 hours ago

One conclusion is that they should start having more children or their economy will keep on dropping.

An inverted population pyramid in a high-entitlement society will lead to economic collapse.

Comment by lm28469 16 hours ago

That's to be expected for developed countries, the US had about the same increase over the same period: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

Once you remove cooked numbers and account for inflation the real growth of developed countries is very slow.

Comment by graemep 15 hours ago

I suspect most western countries are similar, but that is not the same number as it is median, whereas I think the number in the article is mean.

Comment by Swenrekcah 17 hours ago

Keep in mind this is adjusted for inflation. However I agree it should have been more during this period.

Comment by mriet 18 hours ago

It's kind of weird that Romania has done so well, given that amount of turmoil in Romanian politics and Romania in general in the last 20 years.

Basically, it went up for Romania because they got access to the EU market (in terms of both exports and remittances) starting in 2007 and that helped, _despite_ everything else that went on. So.. kind of a win for Romania and the EU, I guess.

Comment by petre 17 hours ago

Except Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, so they have only been for 17 years in the union.

Comment by adverbly 18 hours ago

This is measuring household not individual... Needs context then... How did average working hours per household change during that period?

Comment by frikskit 17 hours ago

Hours worked for full time employees in EU apparently has been falling year over year since at least 2013. Maybe it has increased for part timers though?

Not sure how to square that with the fact that there’s been low productivity growth since 2008.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser and either search or use data code tps00071

Comment by Swenrekcah 17 hours ago

In the higher income countries the hours worked have fallen, however it may be that in lower income countries they have increased.

That is to say, due to more work opportunities more people have gotten jobs that count towards measured work hours and GDP. Including households who used to have one person working jobs that count towards metrics now have two.

I don’t have numbers for this though, just an informed guess.

Comment by frikskit 16 hours ago

Good point. It would be sufficient for there simply to have been an increase in % of households where both parents work. That can lead to fewer hours worked per employee, low productivity growth, and increase in household income.

Comment by fulafel 14 hours ago

Household income per capita is a bit confusing, can't blame anyone for interpreting this way. But from the glossary "Household real income per capita is the adjusted gross disposable income of households, in nominal terms, divided by the total population (source: national accounts) and by the deflator (price index) of household actual final consumption. "

So it's not divided per household.

But the point about working hours remains.

Comment by grafmax 17 hours ago

Many things are missing from this picture. It uses mean not median income, which would do a better job of telling how widespread the increase is. It uses a basic inflation adjustment which doesn’t differentiate between luxury goods and services vs basic necessities. In other words it’s hard to tell to what degree this rise has benefited people in general.

Comment by 17 hours ago

Comment by user____name 16 hours ago

More granular breakdowns, e.g. per income percentile and sector would be useful.

Comment by svilen_dobrev 14 hours ago

hah. Bulgaria does not count i guess. Even if same timing/trajectory as Romania. Too much cyrillics maybe.

Comment by spwa4 8 hours ago

Strange just how much inequality exists within the EU ... WTF.

Comment by spwa4 12 hours ago

Meanwhile ... Inflation from 2004 to 2025

Cumulative price change 57.20% Average inflation rate 2.18%

https://www.in2013dollars.com/europe/inflation/2004?amount=1...

Comment by alephnerd 15 hours ago

How much of this is convergence due to the addition of much poorer Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe - especially because this is "per capita"?

Edit: looking at the source dataset, it is just convergent growth from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe. Those EU countries that were already developed countries in the 2000s grew well below the average excluding Ireland, Sweden, and Germany.

Comment by izacus 7 hours ago

Yes, this is EU doing what's meant to do.

Comment by decremental 18 hours ago

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