The article focuses on a research conducted in order to determine the changes in income distribution in the Netherlands since 1977. It concerns the changes in the inequality of the partitioning of besteedbare incomes of households and the changes in the inequality in the development of purchasing power of households. It has been discovered that the inequality of besteedbare incomes between 1977 and 1984 remained more or less the same, whereas from 1985 the inequality has increased. The research revealed that upto 1984, the purchasing power development of the lowest income group has been unfavourable as compared to the highest income group. But, after 1985 an opposite picture arose.
