Norway has one of the most generous welfare states in the world, and when it comes to sick leave, we are at the top. If you are away from work, you get 100% pay from day one. That is unless you make more than $70,000. Everything you make over that will not be payed out, but I think we all can agree that 70 grand a year is enough for most people to survive on?
Self-certification
If you get a cold or have a blistering headache, you call your work and tell them you're not coming. Normally you can do this 4 times a year, and on each of those 4 occasions you can stay away from work 3 days in a row. For government and municipal employees that number is even higher, with 24 individual days per year. That's almost a month per year where you can stay at home - no need for a doctor to diagnose you. You diagnose yourself, and your employee trust you.
If you do get sick and need to stay home longer, you can stay at home for a full year with full pay as long as you get a doctors certificate.
After that you can still stay at home for another 3 years with 66% pay if you're not ready to work yet.
Of course, this system is very nice for those who are actually ill. But it's also a very ineffective system. A lot of people waiting to sort out their work situation after a year of sick leave wait and wait and wait for treatment. And there is almost no economic incentive to try and get better. While you are waiting for a psychiatrist or medical examinations, you are basically encouraged to stay on the couch and watch TV. For years. Working will be penalized, and you may risk losing all your benefits.
There are about 150,000 people in Norway currently waiting for treatments and assessments. These people are not counted as unemployed by the way. Even though a wast majority of them are not getting back to work. Most end up on disability benefits.
This is not strange, because an increasing number of young people who end up there have mental issues. And they are not getting help early, they are told to wait on the couch for years, and are not being told how they can use these years to gain knowledge, grow as persons and eventually be stronger than ever once they are done with their three years. Most of the time they become chronics and ends up on disability.
Do people exploit this generous system?
Hell yes. You don't have to be a specialist on incentive-theory to see that one coming. According to SSB (the statistical buerau ) 8% of women and 4,8% of men (total 6,4%) is at any given time sick. More than 10% of the population is on disability. The group that is growing the most is young people under 30.
We are twice as sick as our neighbours in Sweden. And our sick leave benefits are twice as good.
From these numbers we can assume a couple of things. We can assume that having generous benefits doesn't make us sicker to begin with. That is not logic, and makes no sense. There is no correlation between handing out generous benefits and peoples actual physical and mental health. BUT, one could argue that it incentivizes people to FEEL more sick, looking for reasons to be sick so that they can stay at home. And when you start feeling sick, work less, fall behind, begin laying on the couch, you will in many cases feel worse. You can more easily adopt issues, especially mental ones.
Then we can assume that people exploit these benefits. And we can most certainly assume that people from countries where societal trust ranks lower than in Norway, where the attitude is "you grab whatever you can" and the whole idea that a government just hands out money, trusting you when you say you struggle with depression, is in my opinion something that a lot of foreigners speculate in. Men with immigrant background use 10 more sick leave days a year than norwegian born men.
So there is also a cultural aspect to this. Norway is like all the other European countries changing it's demographics, and people from cultures with less political trust seem to exploit trust given to them. That is only natural.
Conclusion
So there you have it. We certainly do have a very generous welfare system. But does it help us? Are we more healthy? Do we get the help we need when we are sick? No, No and No.
