We analyse the determinants of social assistance receipt among young adults in three Nordic countries, focusing on social-background and life-course events during early adulthood. We ask whether they are Article 274 Journal of European Social Policy 24(3)related differently to short-term and long-term receipt. Short-term poverty could be more individualized than long-term poverty which can be expected to be more strongly related to social background. We applied generalized ordinal logit modelling to longitudinal register-based data. Both social-background and life-course factors were found to be important, but our results did not confirm the hypothesis of social background predicting mostly long-term receipt and life-course factors predicting mostly short-term receipt. Leaving the parental home early and parental social assistance receipt were important determinants of social assistance receipt, and both factors predicted longer duration of receipt as well. We found some differences between the countries, which may be related to differences in youth unemployment and social welfare systems.
In this study, we investigated if there has been a displacement in the type and coverage of welfare services available for young unemployed adults in Finland, Norway and Sweden over the last two decades. This question is important because a number of studies have argued that the generous unemployment benefits and extensive labour market intervention found in the Nordic welfare states shield young people from the most severe consequences of economic inactivity. In this article, we instead show that during this period, less generous means‐tested unemployment and social assistance benefits have become the most important form of income protection for young people. In evidence, earnings‐related unemployment benefits now cover only 10 per cent of unemployed Swedes and Finns and 45 per cent of unemployed Norwegians aged 24 years or younger. This development marks a significant change in our understanding of unemployment protection for young people in Nordic countries.
This study considered trends in the intergenerational transmission of social assistance (SA) among young adults in Finland, Norway and Sweden during the 2000s. Comparable administrative register datasets enabled us to compare year by year the social assistance recipiency of 20-year-old adults in the period 1999-2008, together with information on their parents' social assistance recipiency at the time when those young adults were aged 16 years. The intergenerational odds-ratio for SA was stronger in Sweden than in Finland or Norway. The probabilities of transitioning into SA when having an SA family background have declined in all three countries, but less than the transition probabilities into SA when from a non-SA family. This has strengthened the intergenerational oddsratio in all three countries, though only slightly in Norway. The upwards trend in intergenerational odds-ratios for SA follows almost perfectly the declining trend in the number of 20-year-old recipients in these three countries. When the number of SA recipients decrease, it decreases the transition probabilities into SA more among those with a non-SA family background compared to the those with an SA family background. This difference in the decrease of transition probabilities turns into an increase in the intergenerational odds-ratio.
Germany is generally regarded as a case of qualitative “change” in minimum income protection (MIP) schemes, while Sweden is perceived as one of institutional “inertia”. This paper seeks to qualify this view by embedding developments in MIP in wider policy and governance trends. Empirically, it is based on document analysis and qualitative expert interviews in the two countries. Theoretically, the paper applies recent institutional approaches that address patterns of change in more complex ways. In Sweden, an exclusive focus on formal continuity regarding social assistance would disguise its change in function from temporary security system of last resort into one that permanently provides income protection when neighboring policy fields, unemployment and sickness insurance, are downsized. Conversely, in Germany a merger of social assistance and unemployment assistance took place. Yet an exclusive focus on the Hartz reforms would downplay the degree of continuity that nevertheless exists in the unemployment insurance.
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