An AHPSort II Based Analysis of the Inequality Reduction within European Union

Abstract

Nowadays, sustainability is an omnipresent concept in our society, which encompasses several challenges related to poverty, inequality, climate change and so on. The United Nations adopted the Agenda 2030, a plan of action formed of universal Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs) and targets, which countries have to face in order to shift the world toward a sustainable future. One of the most relevant SDGs since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007 has been the so-called reduced inequalities, which consists of dealing with the inequality of opportunities and wealth between and within countries. However, reducing inequalities depends on many heterogeneous aspects, making it difficult to make a proper analysis that evaluates the European Union (EU) countries performance of this goal. In this study, we introduce a novel approach to evaluate the inequalities in EU countries based on a sorting a multi-criteria decision-making method called AHPSort II. This approach allows to obtain a classification of the EU countries according to their achievements in reducing inequalities to subsequently carry out a deep performance analysis with the aim of drawing conclusions as to the evolution of inequality in them along the years. The results are consistent with the main international organizations’ reports and academic literature, as shown in the Discussion Section.