According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), pay transparency legislation can help address the gender pay gap and reduce broader gender inequalities in the labor market. Nordic countries are no strangers to pay transparency laws and it should come as no surprise that they have some of the smallest gender pay gaps in the world.
Here’s a little fun history about pay transparency in the Nordic region that may inspire you to look at U.S. policies from a new lens.
Sweden, Norway, and Finland, oh my!
Pay transparency in Sweden goes back over 250 years to 1766. To guarantee an open society where every citizen had access to information about the government, the principle of public access to official documents was incorporated into their Freedom of the Press Act.* Annual tax returns are considered official documents and thus, once finalized by the government’s tax agency, the income, assets, and taxes paid by each adult citizen are publicly available information.
Norway has had a similar law for almost as long, and for years tax-return information was published in a book and available for browsing at any public library in the country. The country moved its records online in 2001, making searching the records even easier than before. The program was updated in 2014 to make it harder to search for individuals anonymously, but private businesses have since popped up to offer those services for a small fee.
Finland adopted a public documents law in 1951 that was amended into its constitution in 1999. Unlike Norway and Sweden, the information is not available online and searches can only happen at tax offices or be requested over the phone.
Transparency is important in this region, in part because the citizens of these countries pay high levels of income tax. As one Norwegian citizen told the BBC back in 2017, “When you pay that much you have to know that everyone else is doing it, and you have to know that the money goes to something reasonable.” In other words, the benefit of having that peace of mind outweighs any sort of envy that could come from knowing that information about your friends and neighbors.
Public salaries in the U.S.
Although tax information is private in the U.S., there are certain employees in the country who do have their salary published as public information. This includes executive officers in public companies, which are required to release that information in proxy statements to the SEC – all of which can be searched by the public using the SEC’s EDGAR tool. For example, in the latest proxy filing for Apple, CEO Tim Cook’s base salary in 2023 was $3 million.
Elected officials including governors, mayors, and state representatives also have their salaries publicly available. For example, the Texas governor currently makes $153,750, the mayor of Denver makes $205,991, and all 100 U.S. senators make $174,000.
Salary information about many public employees, including employees at federal agencies, cities, universities, and schools, is also readily available. For example, the head football coach at Washington State University made $2,730,400 in 2023.
*Fun Fact: Sweden was the first country to write freedom of the press into its constitution in 1766, stating “those in authority must be held accountable and all information must be freely available.”
