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In public and professional discourse, there is a strong rhetoric of a rooted Czech egalitarianism. This study thus traces various objective and subjective dimensions of socio-economic inequality in an attempt to examine the valid-ity of this rhetoric. It uses various data on levels and trends in earnings, household income and living conditions in the Czech Republic in comparison with other European countries. After a long period of stability during the communist regime, a parallel rise in wage disparities and household income inequality began in the early 1990s: the Gini coefficient in both areas grew from 0.20 to 0.26 and the ratio of the highest to the lowest tenth of income increased by 1.6 times. In the other European transition countries, this rise occurred at an even faster pace. Regarding earnings, they are far from egalitarian today. According to a survey of companies, in a ranking of European countries by earnings dis-parities the Czech Republic now figures around the middle. Further, there is little equality in the structure of earnings: gender differences in earnings are among the greatest in Europe, differences in education are slightly above the European average, and the differences among industries are well above the average. In contrast, household income inequality in the Czech Republic is among the lowest in Europe, with less inequality observed only in Scandinavian countries. Income data based on household surveys, however, capture only about 70% of the income registered by national accounts; therefore, the real income inequality may be somewhat higher. In Scandinavian countries, the data on household income from household surveys is more reliable, due to the use of administrative data in household surveys.The rate of poverty risk based on the relative distribution of equivalised household income, which is the most frequently quoted figure in media, is lowest in the Czech Republic. However, according to indicators related to consumption and householder perceptions of their income, the poverty rate is considerably higher. Nevertheless, the Czech Republic still ranks well in the European comparison, at approximately tenth. In terms of wealth distribution, according to the prestigious UNU-WIDER international database and data published by Credit Suisse, the Czech Re-public ranks among countries with very high wealth inequality, a direct opposite to the very flat wealth distribution in Slovakia. The figures indicat-ing this do not, however, seem to be well substantiated, given the assumption of a close association between income and wealth inequality.
As regards attitudes towards inequality, the liberal attitudes that were widely held in the early 1990s later shifted towards more social equality views. However, a comparison of 1999 and 2008 data suggests again a slight departure from equality requirements. According to comparative European data, Czechs are not exceptional in this area, holding in fact rather weak egalitarian beliefs. Regarding the perception of an ideal society as being a ‘middle-class society’, the Czech Republic ranks behind Western countries but at the top of transition countries. The results gathered in this study cast some doubt on the generally shared opinion in the Czech Republic that this country enjoys extraordinary equality, and that there is an exceptional Czech bent towards egalitarianism. In fact, Czech society is not the most equal in earnings, nor in the economic situation of its households. Although the country ranks among societies with low social inequality, Czechs are not ‘so exceptional’ in their objective eco-nomic equality, nor are they extraordinarily egalitarian in their attitudes.
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