Estonia is one of the three Baltic countries, together with Latvia and Lithuania. There are three important dates for this country that deserve to be remembered, from a political and economic point of view: i) 20 August 1991: Estonia becomes an independent country from the former Soviet Union; ii) 1 May 2004: Estonia, together with Estonia, nine other countries (mostly Eastern European) enter the European Union;iii) 1 January 2011: Estonia enters the Eurozone, therefore the Euro is adopted as the new currency. The population of Estonia is 1.3 million (according to the last census carried out in 2014) and the GDP per capita in 2017 was estimated at €21,400 for 2017: this is considered the best performance among the three countries Baltics. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Estonia suffered badly from the global crisis of 2008-2009, as the total real GDP collapsed by 15% and the recovery of the next few years was rather slow. In 2017, real GDP growth was 4%, and the forecast for 2018 and 2019, according to the European Commission, is for growth of around 3%. The inflation rate increased in 2017 towards 3.7%, due to the global increase in prices of goods such as food and energy. The expectation for 2018 and 2019 is a reduction of 3%. At this point we analyze in more depth some of the most relevant characteristics and aspects of the Estonian economic system. The country has a good level of education with positive effects on the workforce: the unemployment rate has decreased by 10% compared to 2010 (in 2009 there was a peak of almost 20%, while now it is around 7%), although this change has also been favored by a parallel contraction of the working age population which has occurred gradually over the last decade. The high employment rate is one of the drivers of private consumption growth and a relatively low inflation rate. The country also faced a sharp increase in wages, both private and public, and in the minimum wage level, due to the fact that many potential skilled workers preferred to leave the country rather than stay there. The only wage issue Estonia still faces is the gender pay gap, which stands at 26.9%, far above the European average (around 10 percentage points), and this is mainly due to furlough very flexible parental. Estonia's system: unlike other countries, the new parent who benefits from it (in most cases it is a woman) has the right to suspend work for up to 18 months from the birth of the new child. The effect is that the woman has to face more problems to re-enter the job market, effectively creating a breaking point in her career. We use wages to introduce one of the main economic problems in Estonia: income inequality. In fact, the Gini coefficient, one of the most important indicators of inequality in a given country, is estimated at 0.35, one of the highest values ​​among OECD countries. This situation is caused by the combination of several factors: for example, the after-tax distribution and (in the case of the elderly) low pensions. We therefore see that some categories of people are more likely to become poorer in the coming years: in addition to the elderly, this is the case, for example, also for the unemployed and families with three or more children. This does not mean that the State is doing nothing to mitigate the problem: first of all, a considerable part of social spending is destined for families and, more importantly, a reform of the tax system has been planned, which should lead to a more equitable distribution,.