countries (Latvia in particular) are very low—typically 20 percent or even lower, when expressed as a share of the prevailing national averages. By contrast, the poorest 5 percent in Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Slovenia have considerably higher incomes. Third, the richest 5 percent of the population in Latvia and Hungary have very high incomes in relation to the prevailing national averages (roughly 3.5 to 4 times as high), in sharp contrast to the rich in Slovenia and the Czech Republic (roughly 2 to 2.5 times the national average).

34. The distribution of the population aged 16 years and older by level of education is presented in Table 8. In addition to illustrating differences in educational attainment across countries, the table also shows how, within each country, those with higher education tend to be concentrated among the top income groups. Educational attainment in most EU8 countries is, in general, quite high. However, the Baltic countries stand out in that a higher share of their adult population has completed post-secondary or tertiary education than in other countries. This in turn helps explain (at least in part) why average incomes of the top deciles are higher than in other countries.

**Table 8: Educational attainment of the population in EU8 countries**

|**Level of**<br>|**Per**<br>|**centage of th**<br>|**epopulation**<br>|**aged 16yrs a**<br>|**nd older with**<br>|**level of edu**<br>|**cation indicat**<br>|**ed**<br>|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Education**|**Slovenia**|**Czech R.**|**Slovakia**|**Hungary**|**Estonia**|**Poland**|**Lithuania**|**Latvia**|
|**Population with:**|||||||||
|Primary or less|21|0|2|10|6|23|11|4|
|Lower secondary|11|17|19|22|18|3|15|22|
|Upper secondary|51|70|64|50|42|55|30|45|
|Post-secondary / tertiary|16|12|15|19|34|19|41|29|
|**Poorest decile group:**|||||||||
|Primary or less|47|0|4|16|9|29|9|4|
|Post-secondary / tertiary|4|3|6|5|23|5|21|13|
|**Richest decile group:**|||||||||
|Primary or less|4|0|0|1|0|4|1|0|
|Post-secondary /tertiary|56|38|37|55|63|56|77|58|

_Source:_ World Bank staff calculations based on data from the 2006 EU Survey of Income and Living Conditions 35. In Slovenia and Poland, between one-fifth and one-fourth of the adult population has only primary or lesser education. However, as shown in the earlier section, the respective national benefits systems redistribute a much higher share of incomes to poor households in Slovenia as compared to Poland, as a result of which average incomes of even these disadvantaged groups in the former are much more equally distributed than in the case of the latter. In other words, a person with primary education or less is much better-off in Slovenia compared to a person with similar qualifications in Poland, both in absolute as well as relative terms. The Czech Republic and Slovakia stand out in that educational attainment in these countries appears to be more egalitarian than in other EU8 countries. This in turn is probably why inequality of disposable incomes is quite low in these two countries, despite the relatively smaller role that the national benefits systems play in redistributing incomes within these countries. To sum, much of the observed inequality of disposable incomes within countries can be attributed to differences in human capital of individuals.

36. Table 9 presents the distribution of the working age population aged 18 to 64 years by employment status. The unemployed tend to be concentrated among the poorest income decile (an odds-ratio of roughly 3-5 compared to the overall population). The EU-SILC data set includes a work-intensity variable, whereby each household is assigned a work intensity status ranging from 1 to 4 (1 denotes not working, and 4 denotes working full-time); as Table 9 clearly shows, average work intensity scores for the richest deciles are much higher than the poorest decile group.

19