文章基本信息

标题：Too many ill Swedes?
本地全文：下载
作者：Per Eckefeldt ; Zdeněk Čech
期刊名称：ECFIN Country Focus
电子版ISSN：1725-8375
出版年度：2004
卷号：1
出版社：European Commission Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs
摘要：Absence from work due to sickness has doubled during the last five years in Sweden. How can it be that the Swedes are so sick? Is it due to a sharp deterioration of the (perceived) health situation or is it a natural consequence of having generous universal social insurance schemes? The answer is probably a bit of both. In this note, we describe the problem, the policy response so far and finally to what extent these might be supplemented further. The Swedish authorities have increasingly been addressing the sickness problem in recent years and more generally several targets have been set, all geared towards achieving higher employment. This will enable keeping important tax bases as broad as possible, which in turn facilitates keeping tax rates as low as possible. There is an ambition to reduce the marginal effects resulting from the interaction of tax and benefit systems and the incentives to work more have increased in the last couple of years, due to labour income tax cuts. However, the financial incentives to go back to work when claiming sickness or unemployment benefits remain weak, in particular at the low end of the wage scale, suggesting that there is still scope for improvement.