(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
It is not free for many Norwegians to have a picture of immigrants as a population group with widespread use of social security benefits.
Yes, according to a new report from Statistics Norway (SSB), we do not have very high thoughts about our new compatriots in that way. The Statistics Norway report “Immigration and immigrants 2004” shows that four out of ten Norwegians have a suspicion that most immigrants abuse the country's welfare schemes.
There is no study on whether social abuse is more widespread among immigrants than ethnic Norwegians. But when it comes to who makes use of different social security schemes, we know more.
And the fact is that both old-age pension, disability pension and pension for surviving spouse are less common among immigrants than in the general population.
- Only one in ten first-generation immigrants has either a retirement pension, a disability pension or a pension for a surviving spouse. In the population as a whole, one in five people has one or another of these pensions, explains cand.oecon. and adviser in Statistics Norway, Grete Dahl.
This means that it is half as common among first-generation immigrants to make use of these benefits as in the population of Norway overall.
Below average
In pure numbers, the ratio looks like this based on figures from 2000:
- First-generation immigrants make up 5,5 per cent of the total population. But they receive only 2,3 percent of all old-age pensions from the National Insurance Scheme, 4,5 percent of all disability pensions and 5,2 percent of all pensions for surviving spouses, says Dahl.
The disability benefit is granted to persons aged 18-67 years. In 2000, almost 12.300 first-generation immigrants received a disability pension. This makes up six percent of all first generation immigrants in the same age group.
But for the total population of Norway aged 18-67, a full 9,6 per cent had a disability pension.
- There is reason to ask questions about what factors explain this low disability rate among first-generation immigrants. Disability pension is linked to illness or inability to work, but there is no reason to believe that there is less morbidity among first-generation immigrants than in the general population, Dahl points out.
Integration and jobs
The adviser at Statistics Norway believes that the answer lies in two conditions. First, disability rates are greatest in the oldest age groups. Since there are a percentage fewer older immigrants in this group, this explains to some extent the low average disability percentage among first generation immigrants.
- Lack of integration or participation in working life is probably an even more important explanation. Disability pension can be obtained more easily from the employed than from the inactive, Dahl explains, and points out that immigrants' modest participation in working life may be one of the explanations.
Another feature is that there are relatively more people with minimum pension among disabled immigrants than among all disabled pensioners. This leads to greater use of social assistance.
- A total of 16 percent of first-time immigrants with a minimum pension receive social assistance, and social assistance is twice as common among these as among all disability pensioners with a minimum pension, Dahl says.
Big differences
The longer immigrants live in Norway, the more the proportion of people with disabilities increases.
- Among first-generation immigrants with a residence period of at least seven years in Norway, the proportion of people with a disability pension is as high as in the general population, Dahl says.
Nearly two out of three first-generation immigrants with a disability pension are from non-Western countries.
But there are some differences in disability pension between immigrants with different backgrounds. The proportion of disabled pensioners among, for example, first-generation immigrants from Morocco and Pakistan is 13-15 per cent.
- This is more than twice as large as the average disability rate for all first-generation immigrants, Dahl states.
However, the percentage of first-generation immigrants from China and Sri Lanka is only poor two per cent, well below the six per cent first-generation immigrant average, not to mention the national average of 9,6 per cent.
Statistics Norway's adviser Dahl emphasizes that her explanation for this difference is sinister:
- One must assume that there are health conditions in the countries they come from that are reflected in the differences in the proportion of people on disability benefits, she believes.
Young population group
Despite being above the national average, the number of first-generation immigrants with a disability pension increased in the period 1992-2000 by 80 per cent.
- There is reason to believe that both the number of disability-retired first-generation immigrants and the proportion of disabled people will continue to increase in the time to come, almost regardless of which integration policy and social security and labor market policy is pursued, Dahl believes.
This is simply because first-generation immigrants are today a relatively young population. When, over time, they receive an equal age distribution as the rest of the population, the use of disability benefits will also be greater, and perhaps more similar to the national average.
The fact that first-generation immigrants are currently a young population group is also reflected elsewhere in the social security statistics.
- The demographic conditions explain why first-generation immigrants are underrepresented with regard to receiving old-age pensions, Dahl explains.
- Very bad conditions
While only 5,6 percent of first-generation immigrants received retirement pensions in 2000, the figure for the entire population was as much as 13,5 percent.
The SSB adviser does not think this relationship will even out in the first place.
- The difference will probably not be smaller in the next ten to fifteen years, since there are relatively fewer people in the age group 50-67 years among first-generation immigrants than in the population as a whole, says Dahl, referring to the expected explosion of pensioners among Norwegians that is expected the next few years.
In addition, there is the fact that immigrants are not entitled to a retirement pension at the age of 67, if they have lived in Norway for less than three years before reaching the age of 66. In other words, older immigrants may have lived in Norway for many years without being entitled to a retirement pension.
- A total of twelve percent of all first-generation immigrants who were 70 years or older did not receive a retirement pension in 2000. This amounts to 1500 people, and these older first-generation immigrants have very poor financial conditions, Dahl emphasizes.
Female Performance
The last social security scheme Dahl has undergone is a pension for a surviving spouse. Here, too, first-generation immigrants are below the average for the general population.
Most people who receive this pension today are women. But while the proportion is increasing among first-generation immigrants, the trend is in the opposite direction for the population as a whole.
- Since a pension for a surviving spouse is a typical benefit for women, there is a clear connection between women's occupational participation and the number of people with such a pension. Pensions for surviving spouses are means-tested against their own income, and as more women become employed and receive their own occupational income, fewer surviving women need such pensions, explains Grete Dahl in Statistics Norway.
