Benefits during sickness or in connection with childbirth (Discontinued)

Contact info

Labour Market, Department of Social Statistics
Torben Lundsvig
+45 39 17 34 21

Get documentation of statistics as pdf

Benefits During Sickness or in Connection with Childbirth 2019

The purpose of Benefits in connection with sickness and childbirth is to illustrate the use of the law on sickness respectively maternity law. The statistics have been compiled since 1995, but in its present form comparable from 2003. From the year 2017, the statistics contain only information about sickness benefits because Udbetaling Danmark has taken a new administrative IT system for maternity allowance in use. Maternity benefits will be an independent statistics from 2020.

Statistical presentation

The sickness and maternity allowance is an annual statement of the number of persons, days and amounts paid in connection with illness or childbirth. From the year 2017 only information for unemployment benefit paid in connection with illness. The calculations are distributed according to the legal basis for the payment of unemployment benefits, age, sex and geography. In addition, figures from the daily allowance for sickness and birth are included in the statistics, Publicly Provided, where the extent of absence due to illness or maternity leave is included in a larger context.

Statistical processing

Data comes from the two administrative registers The Administrative Joint-municipal Register for Sickness Benefits and the National Administrative Register for Childbirth Benefits (ended May 2017). When received there are some mechanical monitoring and doublets are removed. When estimating the duration of a case not having a finale date the final date is set to the last day of the year if the case is about sickness benefits. If the case is about childbirth benefits the final date is estimated as the starting date plus the average length measured in days of similar cases having a finale date.

Relevance

The maternity and paternity leave part of the statistic is used by ministries for reasons of gender equality policy and of the unions and the employers' organizations in connection with collective bargaining. The sickness benefit part of the statistic is together with the maternity and paternity leave part section mostly used as an important data element of Analyses of the Danish workforce productivity (economic modeling), Statistics Labour Market Accounts, Statistics Persons receiving public benefits and general absence statistics.

Accuracy and reliability

The statistics summarize the reports of illness, birth or adoption that have triggered the payment of unemployment benefit. The expectation is that all sickness benefit issues with payment will be reported. Similarly, the expectation is that all cases of payment due to maternity leave, maternity leave or leave due to adoption are reported. Therefore, the statistics can be expected to be reliable. However, there are a number of cases that will only be reported long after the end of the year to which the case relates, why the last year is not fully updated.

Timeliness and punctuality

The statistics are published annually in the month of March the year after the reference year. March is chosen as the compromise of current interest and waiting for the last reports of the year to appear. At publishing time the newest data will be less than three months old.

Comparability

The statistics is influenced by local Danish law. The law of parental leave is unchanged since 2002 and it is possible to compare the figures back to 2003. Concerning sick leave there has been several adjustment making it more difficult to compare over time.

Accessibility and clarity

In Statistics Bank Denmark the statistics are published s in the tables under the subject Sickness benefits and Maternity benefits In addition, the statistics include the Statistical Ten Year Overview.