SIR,—Mr. Fennell shares with most other people, including the Swedes
themselves, the belief that Sweden is easily the richest country in Europe. I thought so too until during a recent visit to Stock- holm I could find nowhere to stay except a tiny room in a private flat of quite exceptional squalor. The price, which had been approved by some tourist organisation, would have paid for a perfectly possible small hotel in Copenhagen, Paris or London; it occurred to me that it was perhaps the cost rather than the standard of living that was high in Sweden.
I find that at official rates of exchange Sweden does indeed lead the European countries with a per capita Gross National Product of £539 in 1959 when the British figure was £455. But the West German Statistical Yearbook shows that in the same year the cost of living in Sweden was 30 per cent. higher than in this country; so that a better conversion for Sweden is only £413 a head.
J. W. PYM CORNISII
74 Cheyne Court, SW3
Previous page
