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Last year your average Swedish resident earned 287,064 kronor (median annual income), according to preliminary statistics by Sweden’s national number-crunching agency Statistics Sweden.

That’s just below, for example, $30,000, £24,000, 27,000 euros or 2.055 million Indian rupees according to the exchange rate at the time of writing.

But incomes vary a lot depending on where in Sweden you live, and there is a big gap between wealthy residents in Stockholm suburb Danderyd with a median income of 383,988 kronor and rural municipalities such as Eda, close to the Norwegian border, where the median income only racks up to 224,614 kronor.

Let’s take a closer look at the stats in this graph, which is based on the median income of residents aged 20 or older, who were listed in the Swedish national population register (folkbokförda) on December 31st.

If you want to compare women’s and men’s incomes, keep scrolling down.

Men are still earning far more than women, but the income gap is slowly shrinking. Last year, for example, the median earned income for women was 77 percent of men’s median income, a slight increase from a 72 percent share in 1999, according to preliminary figures presented by Statistics Sweden in September.

If we take a look at the graph below, we see that women in fairly affluent areas such as Stockholm suburbs Danderyd, Täby and Nacka earn the most. But again, there is a big gap between them and women in more rural areas, with Perstorp, Ljusnarsberg and Markaryd at the bottom of the income table.

In general, women’s incomes have been rising at a faster rate than that of men in the past couple of decades, with women’s incomes gaining on men’s incomes in 268 out of 290 municipalities.

So what about the other 22 municipalities? We’ll get to that. Keep reading.

The towns where men’s incomes have been rising faster than women’s in the past couple of decades mainly fall into two categories. In the first category we see places that have experienced a booming economy in particularly male-dominated industries, such as the mining hubs of Kiruna and Gällivare. In the second category are areas where the overall income level is low, which tends to affect women more than men, for example in troubled Stockholm suburbs where unemployment is high.

But, again, we see Danderyd at the top of the table, and at the bottom Haparanda on the Finnish border.

Vocabulary

income – inkomst

earn – tjäna

salary – lön

money – pengar

work – arbeta or jobba (slightly more informal)

We’re aiming to help our readers improve their Swedish by translating vocabulary from some of our news stories. Did you find it useful? Do you have any suggestions? Let us know.