EU income inequality falls to 29.2 points

According to Eurostat's 23 October release, the EU Gini coefficient was 29.2 in 2025, after 29.4 in 2024. Assessing Hungarian households requires examining income levels as well as their distribution. Our subtraction gives a decline of 0.2 points on the indicator's scale.

The new release concerns the evenness of distribution. The detailed background puts Hungary's median annual equivalised disposable income at 11,958 purchasing power standards in 2025, against 22,638 for the EU. Purchasing power standards are a comparison tool, not an amount of euros arriving in a bank account.

Read together, the figures call for care. Incomes in a society can move closer together while the country remains at a lower income level than others. A smaller inequality figure therefore does not justify declaring that a particular family's consumption opportunities have improved.

Our Hungarian labour-market report covers employment, while the EU confidence release measures sentiment for a different period. They can be placed alongside the income picture while preserving their respective timelines. The next comparison should examine annual income series using the same methodology and changes in Hungarian purchasing power. Treating the newly published annual figure as October earnings data would be misleading.

Comparing a family’s position also requires its own record of recurring spending alongside income. The EU average cannot reveal a particular household’s monthly balance.