How Deep are the Roots of Swedish Egalitarianism? A multidimensional approach

Johan Ericsson and Jakob Molinder

No 2024/13, Uppsala Papers in Economic History from Uppsala University, Department of Economic History

Abstract: When did Sweden become equal? This question has far-reaching implications for our understanding of Swedish history, as well as for theories about inequality, institutions, and politics more broadly. In this article, we present the first multidimensional comparative analysis of the development of inequality in Sweden. Unlike most other studies, we combine a variety of measures to provide a more comprehensive view of inequality. Our findings reveal that, although the share of income and wealth accruing to the absolute top was very high at the beginning of the 20th century, Sweden was more equal than many other countries when focusing on the lower parts of the income distribution. Additionally, several indicators suggest that the decline in inequality began in the decades before the turn of the 19th century. These results imply that the development of the Swedish welfare state was both a cause and a consequence of decreasing inequality. We emphasize the importance of widespread access to education as a key factor in shaping distributional outcomes.

Keywords: inequality; distribution; education; wealth; wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 N00 N10 N13 N14 N33 N34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2024-01-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-his
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.uu.se/upeh/article/view/580/514 Full text (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:hhs:uuehwp:2024_013

DOI: 10.33063/upeh.v3i.580

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Uppsala Papers in Economic History from Uppsala University, Department of Economic History Uppsala University, Department of Economic History, P.O. Box 256, SE-751 05 Uppsala, SWEDEN.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anders Ögren ().