As distinct from income or wealth inequality, ‘social inequality’ is currently poorly understood and, at best, unevenly measured. We take a first step towards building a consistent framework to conceptualize and measure social inequality. We characterize social inequality as the relative position of individuals along a number of dimensions that measure achieved outcomes and perceived access to services as prerequisites to actively participate in the life of a community and achieve outcomes in the future. Using survey data from twelve Central and Eastern European countries we construct an index of social inequality that we compare with other measures of inequality, and we use to identify which countries are more or less socially advantaged. We find that cross-national patterns of social inequality differ significantly from patterns derived from measures of income inequality. This is important since countries with less social inequality have higher levels of economic performance and stronger political institutions.
