40% Finns have doubt over welfare state durability: survey

Possible future risks of the Finnish welfare state system rose as a public topic in Finland on Monday, as the Finnish pro-business think tank EVA published a survey on this issue.

Emilia Kullas, director of the Business and Policy Forum EVA, on Monday rolled out the survey, indicating that 44 percent of Finns believe the Finnish pension system would collapse some time in the future and pensions already earned could not be paid, while only 25 percent disagreed with this vista.

The survey noted, however, that 54 percent of Finns think it would be wrong if citizens themselves would have to prepare for the old age through savings. Nine out of ten Finns back the view that the welfare state must be able to provide tax-financed old age services to everyone.

Invited to comment the EVA research at a press conference, Ilkka Kaukoranta, the chief economist of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), said private wealth can never be a replacement to the welfare state. He added that several Finnish studies have recently reflected a wide backing of the population to the welfare state concept.

Nevertheless, EVA predicted in the survey report that Finns will be confronted in the future with the situation that personal fiscal assets will have a crucial importance to the life quality of old age. It refers to the declining birth rates and increasing number of people to be taken care of. And for that situation Finns should have to begin to save more, EVA said.

The welfare state system was created in Finland in the 1960s. It comprises low cost health and old age care, heavily subsidized by public financing, and free education including universities. The current Finnish left-center government has in its program committed itself to upholding the welfare state as a predominantly public operation.