ABSTRACT
The Finnish welfare state which, in the 1980s, had been on the average European level or slightly above it in terms of social expenditure, public employment and level of taxation suddenly, in the 1990s, proved to be a burden for the shaky national economy. Because of rapidly increasing mass unemployment, the negative economic growth rates and only moderate adjustments in the major welfare schemes, the proportion of total social expenditure of the GDP rose, within a few years, from 26 per cent to 35 per cent (Table 4.1).
