Access
This paper documents how the inequality of household equivalent disposable income has changed in Sweden over the period 1990–2021. We find that income inequality has unambiguously increased. Measured by the Gini coefficient, inequality increased from around 0.19 to almost 0.3 by the end of 2020. We then analyse the backgrounds to this change by measuring the importance of changes in different components of the overall income distribution: the wage distribution; the distribution of hours of work; capital incomes; income differences between labour market participants and non-participants; income redistribution through income taxes and benefits; and, finally, the effect of increased immigration to Sweden.
Authors

Uppsala University

Research Fellow University of Stockholm
Mårten is a Research Fellow at the IFS and Associate Professor at Stockholm University, previously at the Stockholm School of Economics.
Charlotte Lucke
Journal article details
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-5890.12367
- Publisher
- Institute for Fiscal Studies
- Issue
- Volume 45, Issue 2, June 2024, pages 187-204
Suggested citation
A, Karimi and C, Lucke and M, Palme. (2024). 'Components of the evolution of income inequality in Sweden, 1990–2021' , 45(2/2024), pp.187–204.
More from IFS
Understand this issue

Professor Sir Richard Blundell to give the Marshall Paley Lecture on inequalities
27 September 2024

Growth and cutting inequality must go hand in hand for Labour
23 July 2024

There are good reasons to reverse the two-child limit
"The two-child limit has been pretty much laser-focused on increasing the measured rate of child poverty." Paul Johnson writes for the Times.
22 July 2024
Policy analysis

How should governments help households during an energy crisis?
The government spent billions on support to help households with their energy bills in 2022–23. Could a better-designed package have saved money?
31 January 2025

Share of 25- to 34-year-olds living with parents up by over a third since the mid 2000s
The rise in people living with their parents has been concentrated among those in their late 20s and varies substantially by ethnicity.
11 January 2025

Exposure to air pollution in England, 2003–23
We set out how air pollution (PM2.5) has changed across England and explore inequalities by ethnicity, income deprivation, region and age.
6 December 2024
Academic research

Health inequality and health types
We use k-means clustering, a machine learning technique, and Health and Retirement Study data to identify health types during middle and old age.
3 October 2024

Did Belgium withstand the storm of rising inequalities? Income inequality in Belgium, 1985–2020
Belgium exhibits a rather constant level of income inequality over the last decades, contrary to Germany, the United States and some Nordic countries.
2 October 2024

What lies behind France's low level of income inequality?
We document the evolution of working-age individual pre-tax and disposable income inequality in France since the late 1960s using household surveys.
2 October 2024