TRANSFER INCOMES

There are just over 5.5 million people in Denmark. Of those, just over 1 million are children, some 860,000 are pensioners and 225,000 are in higher education. That leaves almost 2.6 million working and - the most striking number - almost 723,000 on transfer incomes. These are given to people of working age who, in one way or another, are not doing very much; they receive sick pay, are on the dole or maternity leave, have a disability pension, have taken "efterløn" (early retirement) or are being retrained. What is relevant is that they represent more than a fifth of the working age population. Indeed, if you add on pensioners (who receive a state pension), children (who receive child benefit) and students (who receive S.U.), more than half of the population gets some form of income from the state.

The 723,000 is less than the 900,000 of 15 years ago. Nevertheless, it is still worrying, not least because the number of pensioners is rising. Pensioners matter a lot in this debate, since they live longer and longer lives, thereby bringing extra costs, both direct (in the form of pensions paid out over more years) and indirect (in the form of health and other care costs).

Against that background, it is not surprising that the current government is undertaking reforms that attempt to reduce some of these costs. However, such a strategy brings with it two big problems. First, increasing the number of people working is proving to be very hard indeed. Secondly, since reform generally means reduced entitlement, a lot of affected voters are unhappy.

Walter Blotscher