Relative income levels in the Scandinavian countries

Abstract

Abstract Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all have national accounts tlut cover more than a century and that are, at least in principle, similarly constructed. The Danish series start already at the beginning of the 19th century, while the Norwegian and Swedish ones start around 1860, From the point of view of quality, the Swedish series seem to be considerably more uneven than the Danish and Norwegian ones. 1 For our comparison of incomes, we use data about the GDP per capita. The terms ‘income’ and ‘GDP per capita’ arc used synonymously and with no particular specificauon. The comparisons had been more meaningful if data about income per occupied person had been used. However, lack. of sufficiently reliable occupation data prevented this.