page_title: Welfare in Finland
section_title: Income security programmes classified as social insurance
hierarchical_section_title: Welfare in Finland / Income security programmes classified as social insurance
caption_attribution_description: English: An office of the Social Insurance Institution (KELA) in Leppävaara, Espoo, Finland. Founded in 1937, the original function of KELA was as the provider of national retirement benefits. Later its functions have been expanded to include unemployment insurance and student grants among other things.
context_page_description: Social security in Finland, or welfare in Finland, is, compared to other countries’, very comprehensive. In the late 1980s, Finland had one of the world's most advanced welfare systems, one that guaranteed decent living conditions for all Finns. Since then social security has been cut back, but still the system is one of the most comprehensive in the world. Created almost entirely during the first three decades after World War II, the social security system was an outgrowth of the traditional Nordic belief that the state was not inherently hostile to the well-being of its citizens, but could intervene benevolently on their behalf. According to some social historians, the basis of this belief was a relatively benign history that had allowed the gradual emergence of a free and independent peasantry in the Nordic countries and had curtailed the dominance of the nobility and the subsequent formation of a powerful right wing. Finland's history has been harsher than the histories of the other Nordic countries, but not harsh enough to bar the country from following their path of social development.
context_section_description: Finland, like the other Nordic countries, divides most of its social programmes into those that guarantee income security and those that provide social and health services. Income security programmes come in two categories: social insurance, which provides income despite old age, illness, pregnancy, unemployment, or work-related injuries; and income security classified as welfare, which consists of income transfers to aid families through measures such as child payments, maternity grants, payments to war victims and their survivors, and financial aid to those afflicted by disability or pressing needs. Programs of the first category, income security guarantees, take some 80 percent of the funds expended for social welfare.
caption: An office of the Social Insurance Institution (KELA) in Espoo. Its original function was as the provider of national retirement benefits. Later its functions have been expanded to include unemployment insurance and student grants among other things.
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