Highest income equality in the Nordics

The Faroes lead the way in income equality among all Nordic nations, according to the latest Statistics Faroe Islands figures from 2020.

Iceland is next on the list, followed by Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Åland and Greenland.

A key measure of income distribution is the so-called Gini coefficient. If all citizens in a country had the same income, the country’s income Gini coefficient would be 0. If one household earns all of the country’s income, the income Gini coefficient would be 100.

The Faroese Gini coefficient went from 22 in 2019 to 21.1 in 2020. Greenland, at the other end of this scale, had a figure of 34.9 in 2020. The EU average for 2020 was 30.

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In related news, Faroese tax revenues have increased over the past year.

National tax revenues increased by 6.5 percent in the first five months of this year, compared with the same period last year. Local tax revenues increased by 5 percent.

Tórshavn municipality saw the biggest growth in tax revenues, followed by Runavík, Klaksvík and Eystur municipalities.

In percentage terms, the biggest tax revenue growth was in Húsavík, followed by Viðareiði, Hvalba and Eiði municipalities. Fugloy, Skopun and Fámjin municipalities saw a year-on-year drop in tax revenues in the first five months of this year.

And one more figure from Statistics Faroe Islands: the latest population figure from 1 May is 53,941.

Read the Faroese versions of this article here, here and here.

More Faroese News in English.