Countries like Scotland

The Scottish Government's first independence paper compared the UK with ten independent European countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.¹

What the comparison found

• The comparator countries are wealthier than the UK. In 2020, GDP per person ranged from $87,735 in Ireland to $40,607 in the UK.¹
• Apart from Finland in 2015, every comparator had higher GDP per person than the UK in every year since 2000.¹
• All ten have lower income inequality than the UK.¹
• Child poverty and pensioner poverty were lower in the comparators than in the UK, with the exception of pensioner poverty in Switzerland.¹
• The comparators took the top nine places in the World Economic Forum's 2020 Social Mobility Index. The UK was 21st.¹
• Productivity (GDP per hour worked, 2020) ranged from 111.8 in Ireland to 61.3 in the UK.¹
• Apart from Ireland, all the comparators invested more in research and development than the UK.¹

The paper concludes that “the full powers of independence are necessary to build a successful model in which deep social solidarity and economic dynamism become mutually-reinforcing.”²

The challenge

Comparisons between countries have limits, because every country's history and economy is different. The comparison shows what similar countries have achieved; it does not guarantee the same results for Scotland. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that faster growth after independence is “far from certain and would be easier said than done”.³