Institutional Development of Sickness Cash‐benefit Programmes in 18 OECD Countries

This article traces past and present trends in the institutional development of sickness daily allowance schemes in eighteen OECD countries. We are interested whether there still are—or if there ever have been—distinctive models in sickness benefits. The historical part of the study inspects the development of coverage and generosity benefits. Thereafter the extent to which sickness benefits have been targets for retrenchment will be analysed. The study shows that up until 1985 the Nordic programmes guaranteed better benefits than corporatist schemes, but the situation has since changed, and the Nordic countries do not any longer provide higher compensations. In this respect, these two groups of countries have clearly converged and simultaneously their distance from the countries with basic security or targeted schemes has increased. When it comes to coverage, the Scandinavian schemes have to a great extent preserved their universality, whereas the other groups of countries have lost a bit in their coverage. Thus, in this dimension at least, we can still depict a clear Scandinavian pattern. However, there are indications of convergence towards the corporatist or labour market‐based model.