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Finland Family Aid
Financial aid to families with children came in the
form of
child allowances, child care and maintenance allowances,
and
maternity benefits. Child allowances dated from the 1930s,
and
they were one of the oldest parts of the welfare system.
The law
in force in the late 1980s was the Child Allowance Act of
1948,
which arranged for payments to parents for all children
under the
age of sixteen and resident in Finland, regardless of the
wealth
or nationality of the parents. By the mid-1980s, payments
for the
first child were a little more than Fmk2,000 a year, with
payments increasing to Fmk4,800 for the fifth and
additional
children. Another payment of about Fmk1,200 was made for
children
under the age of three. Child-care allowances had been
paid since
the 1970s to those parents who stayed at home to care for
small
children or who had engaged someone else to do so. A child
maintenance allowance of as much as approximately Fmk400 a
month
was paid when a court-ordered maintenance payment for a
child of
divorced parents was not being paid. A maternity benefit,
based
on legislation of the 1930s, was paid for each pregnancy.
It came
either as a grant of about Fmk500 or as a much more
valuable set
of materials needed to tend a child. It was withheld if
the
mother did not visit a clinic by the fifth month of
pregnancy.
Data as of December 1988
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