Mr. Jon Pareliussen, Economist, Sweden/Finland desk, Economics Department
The Nordics are rightly renowned for being inclusive societies with low inequality compared to other OECD countries. However, some of the largest inequality increases over the past few decades took place in Sweden, Finland and Denmark. A newly released article building on previous OECD work discusses how market forces, demographic trends and redistribution together shaped the income distribution of the Nordics.
It may seem like a paradox that the Nordics, which are very open economies, heavily integrated in global value chains and front-runners in the use of new technologies, have not seen even more widening distributions of market incomes. However, the extent to which skill-biased technological change and other forces widening the earnings distribution of workers will actually drive up inequality depends on a number of factors, and key policies and institutions in the Nordics play a dampening role. First, institutions such as unions…
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Apr 23, 2018 @ 22:16:42
Why is ‘inequality’ thought to be a problem? The real problem is poverty. Who cares if one person earns $1000 per week and another earns $1500 per week? Why is that a problem?
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