Fewer young people on social assistance

Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Anniken Hauglie ( Conservative Party )Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Anniken Hauglie ( Conservative Party ). Photo:government.no

The percentage of young people on social assistance fell last year. The government believes that tough demands for activity duty has been decisive for the decline.

 

In 2016, over 25,000 young people under the age of 30 received social assistance because they were neither in work, nor education. By 2017, however, there were clear signs of improvement.

Figures from Nav indicate that the number of people under 30 who received social assistance was reduced by 21.4% last year. That is equivalent to over 5,000 people, wrote Klassekampen newspaper.

One of the most important measures introduced on January 1, 2017, was to impose on the municipalities a requirement to force young people on social assistance
into activity. Young people who didn’t respond to the activity requirement risked cuts to their social assistance.

Minister of Labour, Anniken Hauglie of Høyre (H), stated that the activity duty is yet to be evaluated, but it goes a long way to explaining the results.

‘Everything indicates that the introduction of the activity duty has contributed to giving young people new opportunities. Many youngsters I’ve met tell me that at first, they saw the duty as a burden, but after turning around, they had a new and better life. It shows that making demands on young people, in reality, is care in practice’, she said.

The municipalities were given the opportunity to give young people activity duty under the red-green alliance, but only a few municipalities took advantage of the opportunity before they were forced into it last year.

 

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today