The General Inspectorate of Social Security has just published its 45th general report on social security for the year 2019; the report presents in detail the evolution of the revenue and expenditure of the various social protection schemes, the characteristics of the beneficiaries, an analysis of the providers as well as the services provided and covered by the various schemes.

Key figures for 2019

In 2019, social protection revenue amounted to €15,080 million, up 6.0% compared to the year before. Current expenditure reached €13,898 million, representing an increase of 5.8% compared to 2018. The balance sheet for the 2019 therefore presented a positive overall balance of €1,182 million, or 1.9% of GDP.

On the benefits side, by adopting the structure proposed by the European System of Integrated Social Protection Statistics (ESSPROS), old-age / survival benefits represented, with a share of 39.6%, the largest expenditure of benefits provided by the social protection system in 2019. Then came, in order, sickness / health care benefits (25.4%), family benefits (15.4%) and invalidity benefits (10.0%), which includes invalidity pensions, accident benefits and annuities, income for the severely disabled and long-term care insurance benefits.

Unemployment and early retirement benefits and the various employment measures which form the unemployment function accounted for 5.6% of all benefits. Finally, housing and social exclusion benefits made up 4.1% of benefits. Over the past fifteen years, this structure has changed very slightly as a result of economic, demographic and / or institutional changes.

On the revenue side, four sources of funding can be isolated: public authorities, including as an employer (51.8%), protected persons (24.5%), employers outside the public sector (20.3%) and other sources (3.4%), consisting mainly of property income. This distribution applies to the entire social protection system, but each scheme has its own financing method.

The sickness scheme covered an annual average of 879,932 people in 2019. Among them, 69.4% were individually protected and 30.6% benefited from derivative rights. Reflecting the particularity of the Luxembourg labour market, which has a significant share of cross-border workers, 64.6% of the protected persons were residents and 35.4% were non-residents.