Wage and Income Inequality in Two Welfare States: Australia and Sweden

Peter Saunders and Johan Fritzell

Discussion Papers from University of New South Wales, Social Policy Research Centre

Abstract: This paper compares aspects and contrasts of income inequality in Australia and Sweden, focusing on the distribution of wage incomes amongst prime aged full-time workers. After some discussion of the economic and labour market contexts of each country, the development of their wages policies is briefly summarised. This is followed by an analysis, using unit record household income survey data for 1990/91, of the factors contributing to overall income inequality in each country, focusing on the role of earnings, self-employment income and government cash transfer payments. A model is then developed to explain the wage incomes of full-time workers in each country and the model is used to make inequality comparisons which adjust for differences in age structure, industry structure and levels of education. The results indicate that taking account of these adjustments leads to remarkably similar distributions of wage income in each country.

Pages: 43 pages
Date: 1995-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sprc.unsw.edu.au/dp/dp060.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wop:sprcdp:0060

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of New South Wales, Social Policy Research Centre Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().