Who is Granted Disability Benefit in Sweden? : Description of risk factors and the effect of the 2008 law reform

Abstract: Disabilitybenefit is a publicly funded benefit in Sweden that provides financialprotection to individuals with permanent working ability impairments due todisability, injury, or illness. The eligibility requirements for disabilitybenefit were tightened June 1, 2008 to require that the working abilityimpairment be permanent and that no other factors such as age or local labormarket conditions can affect eligibility for the benefit. The goal of thispaper is to investigate risk factors for the incidence disability benefit andthe effects of the 2008 reform. This is the first study to investigate theimpact of the 2008 reform on the demographics of those that received disabilitybenefit. A logistic regression model was used to study the effect of the 2008law change. The regression results show that the 2008 reform did have astatistically significant effect on the demographics of the individuals whowere granted disability benefit. After the reform women were lessoverrepresented, the older age groups were more overrepresented, and peoplewith short educations were more overrepresented. Although the variables for SKLregions together were jointly statistically significant, their coefficientswere small and the group of variables had the least amount of explanatory valuecompared to the variables for age, education, gender and the interactionvariables.