Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela): Statistics on sickness allowances
Keywords
sickness allowance
Classifications
Geographical classification
Municipality, sub-region, region, area for the regional state administrative agency, major region, Mainland Finland/Åland, hospital district, university hospital special responsibility area, whole country
Age classification
Ages 16-64
Data content
The indicator gives the number of people aged 16-64 who have received sickness allowance under the National Health Insurance on at least one day during the year per thousand persons of the same age.
Statistics on sickness allowance do not cover cases of illness that end during the waiting period of the sickness allowance (consisting of the first day of work incapacity and the following nine weekdays). It should be noted that the total population of the same age here also includes pensioners although sickness allowance is not usually payable to them.
Interpretation
Sickness allowance is not payable for periods of work incapacity less than 10 weekdays. Such short periods of absence from work, however, are considerably more common than longer ones. No centralised register data exist on short absences from work. The Social Insurance Institution's register variable can mainly be used to describe prolonged incapacity for work, in addition to which it is reasonably usable as a predictive variable with regard to future incapacity for work. Diagnoses are currently recorded for all sickness allowance recipients while previously this was the case in a small number of cases only.
Restrictions
Individual level data are confidential. For the sake of privacy protection, no municipality level data with less than 4 cases are published.
Additional information
http://www.kela.fi/statistics
tilastot@kela.fi
Legislation
Sickness Insurance Act The most important changes that have affected the time series include the extension of the waiting period for sickness allowance in 1993, the substitution of means-tested sickness allowance for the minimum amount of sickness allowance in 1996, and the restoration of the minimum amount of the allowance in 2002. A more detailed account of the legislation and legislative changes is given in the Statistical Yearbook of the Social Insurance Institution, for instance.
