ABSTRACT
There has been little research into poverty in modern Iceland. The history of Iceland up to the present century has been, however, to a great extent marked by poverty. This chapter presents an analysis of poverty in Iceland during the last 10 years. It describes the data used in the author's study and then presents the results from the measurements of relative poverty rates. The study of poverty is based on data from the regular surveys of the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) at the University of Iceland from 1986 to 1997, as well as the Scandinavian Level of Living Survey from 1988, also undertaken by the SSRI. Finally, the chapter shows how poverty rates differ between major socio-economic groups, both on the basis of gross family earnings and disposable family earnings. There still remains the uncertainty of establishing whether the 20–30 per cent of the survey sample members whom people do not manage to reach are different.
