Hummelgaard acknowledges inequality rose under Social Democrats

Denmark’s finance minister Peter Hummelgaard has acknowledged that both income and wealth inequality have increased while the Social Democrats have been in power, DR reports.

“Yes,” Hummelgaard said when asked whether inequality had risen during that period. The party and Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen have repeatedly pledged to reduce inequality, but the government has been in power for nearly seven and a half years.

Hummelgaard said Denmark remained an equal country, but that powerful structural forces were pushing society towards greater inequality. He said his party had never aimed for a completely equal society and that he did not focus narrowly on the Gini coefficient, a common measure of inequality.

He cited the Arne pension as an example of a reform that had created greater equality but did not show up in Gini statistics. Hummelgaard said he did not regard rising inequality as a failure.

Niels Ploug, a former director of Statistics Denmark, said inequality had continued to rise over the past seven years. He said the wealthiest one per cent of people in Denmark own 25 per cent of the country’s wealth.