Book Chapter
Czech Republic

Economic inequalities play a key role in three areas. From an individual and narrowly economic point of view, they have an important motivational role, beginning with the choice of school and ending with an individual's work performance. From a larger social and societal perspective, they have both a differentiating and integrating function: they are a tool for distinguishing the social classes and, simultaneously, link them together. Finally, from the psychological and political perspective, the degree of perception of the legitimacy of existing disparities has an impact on political preferences and stability of the regime.Data on economic inequalities are rather abundant, but analyses of their individual sections (personal earnings, households incomes, family wealth) are separated. Moreover, even though economic inequality is the very base of social stratification, both structures are only scarcely analysed in their close relationships. Using various sources we try to put together individual information. After a brief description of the pre- 1989 situation, we show the basic changes in class composition and income distribution brought about by implosion of the communist regime. Further, we document changes of individual social strata in more detail. In the third and last section, we observe processes of social structuration involving individual and collective shifts, objective and subjective reranking of people.