however incomes of the richest decile contracted before the crisis and during its earlier phase but then grew between and this illustrates the differential impact of the recent economic crisis along the income distribution while the lowest incomes were protected the middle lost a lot of ground and the top did better at the end of the crisis than before the crisis scandinavian countries tend to combine lower exit and entry rates while southern and eastern european countries tend to have higher rates of both exit and entry householdlevel income events ie relative growth in employee earnings are found to be the most important predictors of transitions into and out of poverty