The age dependency ratio, that is the ratio between people of pensionable age and people of working age, is expected to increase in Sweden from the current level of 30 per cent to 45 per cent by 2050. For Europe as a whole, however, the age dependency ratio is expected to increase from 25 per cent to 52 per cent. At the same time, of all the countries in the OECD only Norway, which is an oil exporter and Switzerland have larger current account surpluses as a percentage of GDP than Sweden. 17 The crisis of the 1990s perhaps meant that the Swedish public accepted the demand for a consolidation of public finances in a different way than in other countries. In many cases, these countries are being forced to conduct similar budget consolidation processes now  16  This is a somewhat controversial claim, however, as future generations can be expected to have higher real incomes due to the growth of productivity in the economy. 17  The National Institute of Economic Research “Sparsamma hushåll har skapat ett stort överskott i den svenska bytesbalansen” (“Thrifty households have created a large surplus in Sweden’s current account”). Article, 2011. 8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  instead. If so, this suggests that the differences in saving compared to other countries will decline in the long term, and thus also the Swedish current account surplus.
The current account on the other hand, which constitutes a flow that adds to or subtracts from these stocks, is less important. 22 Changes in the valuation of the assets and liabilities are affected to a great extent by changes in the exchange rate. 23 There are, however, considerable shortcomings in the statistics in this area. The values of some types of asset are definitely underestimated, as there is a lack of statistics on the Swedish households’ direct investments abroad. The net position can also be measured in different ways depending on whether direct investments are accounted at market value or at book or nominal value. However, both methods give a net position that is much lower than that given by the accumulated current account surplus (see Figure 8). 21  The nominal external position was –22 per cent of GDP in 2010, while the market-value net position was +4 per cent of GDP according to statistics from Statistics Sweden. 22  This is also found by Lane (2006) in an analysis of the Swedish exchange rate. 23  For a more detailed analysis of the external position see Blomberg and Falk, 2006.