Dimensions of Inequality: A Comparison of Attitudes in Sweden and Britain

Attitudes to inequality are compared in Sweden and Britain, using evidence from the International Social Survey Program. Using a more multidimensional model and more representative samples than before, the article starts out from various arguments about greater egalitarianism in Sweden compared to Britain and assesses the arguments in the light of empirical evidence. It is concluded (a) that there are no signs of any strong ‘leftism’ in the Swedish population compared to the British one (b) that attitudes to inequality are multidimensional and tend to fall into two broad perspectives, one emphasizing redistribution and one focusing on incentives (c) that in Sweden, attitudes were mostly structured by class and ‘class-related’ variables, such as income and education, while agegroup differences were surprisingly large in Britain. Sector and gender cleavages seem to be of minor importance. The implications of the findings in relation to various perspectives are discussed.