Sweden has become slightly more equal over the past decade, with the income gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent of earners dropping marginally, according to the World Inequality Report by the French economist Thomas Piketty.
The drop, however, showed Sweden bucking a global trend of ever increasing inequality. The share of global wealth held by the richest 0.001 percent of the world population has grown from almost 4 percent in 1995 to more than 6 percent in 2024, the report found.
According to the report, the income gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent of earners in Sweden decreased slightly from 12 in 2014 to 11 in 2024, something the report described as "a minor change in disparities". The income gap is the …
Sweden has become slightly more equal over the past decade, with the income gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent of earners dropping marginally, according to the World Inequality Report by the French economist Thomas Piketty.
The drop, however, showed Sweden bucking a global trend of ever increasing inequality. The share of global wealth held by the richest 0.001 percent of the world population has grown from almost 4 percent in 1995 to more than 6 percent in 2024, the report found.
According to the report, the income gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent of earners in Sweden decreased slightly from 12 in 2014 to 11 in 2024, something the report described as "a minor change in disparities". The income gap is the ratio between the income share of the top 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent.
The share of wealth held by the richest 10 percent in Sweden has also declined marginally over the past ten years, from 28.1 percent in 2014 to 27.2 percent in 2023, according to the World Inequality Database which is used to compile the report.
"Inequality remains low and relatively stable compared with most advanced economies," the report concluded. "Overall, Sweden maintains a comparatively equal income distribution despite persistent concentration of wealth at the top."
The richest 1 percent in Sweden hold 27 percent of the total assets, a share that varies between 18 percent and 23 percent in the other Nordic countries.
Elinor Odeberg, chief economist at the union-funded think tank Arena Idé, told the TT newswire that it would be wrong to read too much into the decline in inequality, which she said was "a marginal change". The income gap overall, she said, was "extremely large".
Professor Daniel Waldenström at Sweden’s Research Institute for Industrial Economics, argued that both the income and wealth gaps were skewed by young people and students in Sweden who had no savings and little income. The large wealth disparity reflected, he said, the fact that around 15 percent of people in Sweden have more debts than assets, a much higher level than in many comparable countries.
That Sweden’s absolute richest people held a higher share of total wealth than their counterparts in the other Nordic countries, he said, was in some ways "a mark of success" for Sweden’s business environment, which has opened the way for entrepreneurs like Spotify founder Daniel Ek and Stefan Persson, founder of H&M.
"We have businessmen who have become super-rich, which is in many ways a mark of success for our business environment," Waldenström said, pointing to people like Spotify founder Daniel Ek and the Persson family behind H&M.