Wealth: who owns what in Sweden?

The equalisation went on for seventy years and ended around 1980. Roine and Waldenström show that it was not mainly because the rich became poorer, but because ordinary households got something to own: houses, tenant-owned apartments and bank accounts. They call it popular wealth.

The series misses what did not show in tax returns. Including the largest family businesses, which were exempt from the tax, the richest percent's share in 2002 rises from 18 to 24 percent. Money in accounts abroad pushes the share up further.

When the wealth tax disappeared, Statistics Sweden stopped counting wealth per household. Since then all figures are estimates, and they differ because they count different things. What matters most is whether pensions count as wealth, how debts are deducted, and whether you count per household or per adult.

The Riksbank and Statistics Sweden measure how much all households own together, but not how it is distributed among them.

Daniel Lundberg and Daniel Waldenström estimate that inequality rose by about a tenth after 2007, mostly during the financial crises of 2008 and 2009, and that apartments and bank deposits drove it. In 2012 a Swedish adult owned on average 80,800 euros, but the median was only 10,400 euros, because many have small assets or more debt than assets. The authors themselves write that the results depend on the assumptions.

In UBS's annual comparison Sweden has a median of 84,000 dollars per adult but a mean of about 400,000 dollars, and ranks among the most unequal countries in Europe. Critics point out that the public pension is not counted, so Swedes with large mortgages look poorer than they are. Including pension rights makes the distribution clearly more even.

The list mixes old family fortunes, built up in the industrial era and held together in foundations and companies with high-vote shares, with new fortunes from gaming, music, payments and venture capital.

The explanations differ. Some researchers point out that Sweden has no inheritance tax or wealth tax, has a low corporate tax and taxes capital income less than wages, which makes it easier to build and keep a company. Others argue that the same rules make wealth grow faster than wages and keep profits with a few.

The inheritance tax had existed since 1885. When it was abolished, every party voted yes. The reasons were that it hit family businesses when they passed to the next generation, and that the richest could avoid it through foundations and planning, so it mostly hit ordinary houses and summer cottages.

The wealth tax was abolished by the new centre-right government. It said the tax drove capital and entrepreneurs abroad and hurt saving in Sweden, while the largest owners were already exempt through the rules for unlisted shares. The opposition argued that it made the tax system less progressive and that the treasury lost revenue. Together the two taxes raised about half a percent of all tax revenue.

A consequence rarely mentioned is that Statistics Sweden's wealth statistics disappeared with the tax, so what has happened since 2007 is harder to follow.

In the 1800s a large part of all wealth in Sweden was inherited, about as large as in France and Britain. During the 1900s the share fell, and it has not come back. This is not because inheritances are small, but because new wealth, above all housing and pension savings, has grown so fast.

For individual families, inheritance still matters a great deal. Children of rich parents more often become rich themselves, and a study of four generations shows that inheritances and gifts explain at least half of the link between parents' and children's wealth. Education and income explain about a quarter. Studies of adopted children point the same way: the children's wealth resembles that of the parents who raised them more than that of their biological parents.

Households in Sweden together owned about 25,000 billion kronor net at the end of 2025. Their homes were worth roughly 12,000 billion kronor in 2024, more than anything else they own and about three times as much as occupational pensions.

That explains much of the distribution. Those who own their home share in rising prices; those who rent do not. Housing is what evened out wealth after the war, and it is what makes the gaps grow when prices rise. Against the homes stand the debts: most mortgages are taken by households in the middle, so their net wealth swings with prices. Who owns and who rents is covered on Who owns the homes.