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Social assistance payments amounted to almost NOK 4.1 billion, down NOK 90 million in constant prices compared to 1995.
After growing since the mid-1960s, the number of social assistance recipients in Norway is now declining, totalling just 154,000 clients last year. This is 6,600 fewer than the year before and is the lowest number recorded in the 1990s.
Since the peak years of 1993 and 1994 in which more than 166,000 persons received economic assistance, the number dropped by nearly 13,000 clients in the course of 1995 and 1996. This is the number of people receiving social assistance in the course of the year. If we look at the number of clients on the rolls--which have a high turnover rate--at the end of the year, the numbers have dropped from about 69,000 in 1994 to slightly more than 65,000 in 1995 and just over 62,000 in 1996.
The number of new clients or clients who did not receive social assistance the year before, has gone down every year since 1989. In 1989 the number of new clients totalled 69,000; in 1996 it was 51,000. The number of repeat clients or clients who received social assistance the year before, has increased every year, reaching a peak of 106,000 clients in 1995. In 1996 the number of repeat clients dropped to 103,000. The decline is therefore both due to a smaller inflow of new clients and fewer repeat clients.
Oslo still has the largest percentage of clients and the highest social assistance benefits per client. Nevertheless, the capital city has not seen a smaller number of social care cases since 1986.
Payments have not declined at the same pace as the number of clients because the periods over which benefits are paid have grown to a certain extent along with the amount of benefit paid out per month.
Weekly Bulletin issue no. 37, 1997