The Work Approach in Norway: Aims, Measures and Results

Torkel Bjørnskau, Espen Dahl, Jens B. Grøgaard

Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland have all had relatively generous welfare regimes, based on universal rights, collectively referred to as the Scandinavian model. This model is distinguished by the automatic granting of relatively large compensatory income from the state to those who lose their jobs, get sick, disabled, or are otherwise excluded from the workforce.

Recently the welfare state has been subject to serious attacks because of the fiscal problem of not only maintaining these generous arrangements but also dealing with the demographic shift to an ageing population. Sweden’s response of reducing the level of its benefits has met with widespread protests. In an attempt to avoid this, Norway has adopted a “work approach”, which consists of a range of measures, including some designed to provide incentives to work (or education) and others making it more costly to rely on social welfare.

The paper presents the results of evaluations made of a “talk” programme aimed at reducing sick absenteeism, and two work-training programmes aimed at moving people from dependency to paid work. These evaluations show that the sickness reduction and work-training programmes seem to work as intended, and we discuss possible reasons why the interventions have different effects for different groups.