Assessment and recommendations

Norway combines a unique mix of a favourable economic and labour force situation and very high investments in education and health with a pervasive exclusion of people with health problems from the labour market. While the Norwegian system has generated a high and stable employment rate over the last decades, one-fifth of the population receives income supports due to health problems, and spending on disability and sickness benefits amounts to around 5% of GDP, by far the highest level in the OECD. The causes for this combination cannot be found either in a lack of vocational rehabilitation policies or a lack of elaborated support structures both are well developed. Rather, the reasons lie in a political reluctance to revise a very generous social protection system to implement effectively far-reaching changes introduced in the past decade and to enforce new obligations rigorously.