Social security in Finland

Social security in Finland, or welfare in Finland, is, compared internationally, very comprehensive. In the late 1980s, Finland had one of the world's most advanced welfare systems, one that guaranteed decent living conditions for all Finns. Since then social security has been cut back, but still the system is one of the most comprehensive in the world. Created almost entirely during the first three decades after World War II, the social security system was an outgrowth of the traditional Nordic belief that the state was not inherently hostile to the well-being of its citizens, but could intervene benevolently on their behalf. According to some social historians, the basis of this belief was a relatively benign history that had allowed the gradual emergence of a free and independent peasantry in the Nordic countries and had curtailed the dominance of the nobility and the subsequent formation of a powerful right wing. Finland's history has been harsher than the histories of the other Nordic countries, but not harsh enough to bar the country from following their path of social development.

In the last years of the nineteenth century, Finnish social policy had as its goal a lessening of class friction. The few existing pieces of social legislation addressed the needs of specific groups rather than of society as a whole. After the Finnish Civil War, little was accomplished in welfare legislation, except the "Tenant farmer law" (Torpparilaki, Torparlagen), which gave tenant farmers the possibility to buy the land they used and thus get a more secure living. A woefully insufficient national pension plan was set up in 1937, as were measures to aid mothers in need. It was only after World War II that Finnish social policy acquired the characteristics that in the next decades made it similar to other Nordic systems of social welfare.

According to Finnish sociologist Erik Allardt, the hallmark of the Nordic welfare system was its comprehensiveness. Unlike the welfare systems of the United States or most West European countries, those of the Nordic countries covers the entire population, and they are not limited to those groups unable to care for themselves. Examples of this universality of coverage are national flat-rate pensions available to all once they reached a certain age, regardless of what they had paid into the plan, and national health plans based on medical needs rather than on financial means. In addition, the citizens of the Nordic countries have a legal right to the benefits provided by their welfare systems, the provisions of which were designed to meet what was perceived as a collective responsibility to ensure everyone a decent standard of living. The Nordic system also is distinguished by the many aspects of people's lives it touched upon.

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Wikipedia