Iceland

Iceland is in 18th place in the OECD in terms of the share of immigrants in its population, with the foreign-born accounting for 11% of the total population. 52% of them arrived in the last 5 years compared with 22% on average across OECD countries. 32% come from an OECD high-income country.

76% of the foreign-born population are employed (76 and 76% of men and women, respectively), which is higher than the OECD average. The foreign-born population is less likely to be employed than their native-born counterparts. This discrepancy is partly driven by differences in age and educational distributions. After accounting for these differences, the gap between the two groups gets wider for both men and women.

The immigrant household median income in Iceland is in the top half of OECD countries but its level is 24% lower than the native-born one (compared with -21% across OECD countries). 11% of persons living in an immigrant household live with income below the poverty line, compared with an average of 17% across OECD countries.

Infomation on the figures by topic:

The selected country appears dark blue, the OECD average light blue (click here if you cannot visualise these figures)

Topic	Definition
Housing	Immigrants living in a suitably-sized dwelling, %, 2009
Income	Annual equivalised disposable income, USD, 2008
Health	Foreign-born adults reporting to be in good health, %, 2009
Education	Mean reading score of native-born children of immigrants, points, PISA 2009
Employment	Employment rate of the foreign-born population (15-64), %, 2009-10
Skill matching	Highly educated immigrants (15-64) in highly skilled jobs, % of highly educated immigrant employed, 2009-10
Naturalisation	Persons naturalised in 2010 as a % of the foreign population in 2009

Foreign-born population
0.04 million
11.1 % of total population

Foreign-born population (15-64)
	Iceland	OECD average
Recent immigrants
	52%	17%
Highly educated
	..	31%
From an OECD high-income country
	32%	28%
From country with same official language
	..	27%