Abstract
The COVID-19 crisis tested welfare states’ resilience in protecting citizens against sudden health-related and economic shocks. However, the crisis’ effects and responses to it vary substantially across countries. Using administrative registers of the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, we evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on various socio-economic groups by examining the receipt of social benefits and length of benefit spells. Furthermore, we analyse the duration of unemployment and social assistance spells that started during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the probabilities of receiving social assistance among different socio-economic groups during the crisis. The results of our analysis show that in 2020, the receipt of unemployment and social assistance benefits was highest among young people and particularly among women. However, extending the analysis to 2021 we found that unemployment spells were shorter among young people than among older age groups. Thus, while the youngest age groups were hardest hit by the crisis in terms of the increase in the number of recipients, they seem to have recovered from it faster than the older age groups. Our findings indicate that the Finnish social security system succeeded fairly well in mitigating the negative impacts of the crisis for vulnerable groups and those who faced job loss since small adjustments to the benefits maintained the income of these groups.
About the authors
Dr. Merita Mesiäislehto is a senior researcher at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. Her research interests include comparative welfare state research and the situation of vulnerable groups in the labour market. She is involved in several research projects concerning the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis.
Dr. Signe Jauhiainen is working as a senior researcher at the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela). Her research interests are in policy relevant empirical research on social policy, the labour market, public finance and immigration.
M.Soc.Sc. Tuija Korpela is a researcher at the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela). Her research interests include social and public policy and the use of social security benefits – especially last-resort benefits – and services in Finland.
Sami Tuori is a data analyst at Päijät-Häme Joint Authority for Health and Wellbeing. Previously he worked as a statistical analyst at the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela). He has focused on social security and healthcare data analytics.
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