The Swedish Welfare State: The Role of Supplementary Compensations

• The Swedish welfare state has a social security system that covers many forms of incomelosses and gives a high compensation. Compensation is given for loss of income due to sickleave, parental leave, disability, work injury, unemployment and retirement at old age. Butthere are also complementing compensation systems. The most important ones are those decidedby collective agreements between unions and employer associations. They are sometimesorganized as an insurance, in other cases as an agreement that the employer should paythe compensation. There are also other forms of complements than those based on collectiveagreements, for example complementing unemployment insurances for members of unions.Even if the complements are organized in different ways, they add to the social insurances inmore or less the same way. They give an addition under the ceiling in the social insurancesystems, they give compensation over the ceiling so that they more or less eliminate theeffects of the ceiling, and they lengthen the compensation period in some cases. This meansthat the consolidated welfare state differs in a systematic way from that which is determinedby the Parliament. In this paper we describe the differences and discuss the factors thatdetermine the differences between the two welfare states – the traditional one and theconsolidated one.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

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