The Granting of Anticipatory Pension and Flex-Jobs
A Qualitative Analysis of Differences in Practice in Danish Municipalities

This Working Paper examines differences in district council practice that may explain variations in the volume of flex-jobs and early pension granted on health grounds, taking as its starting point a number of interviews involving nine district councils. The study indicates that these differences may be linked to a number of different factors, including:

• the way in which the different districts have handled long-term cash benefit and sickness benefit cases, which in a number of instances has been concerned with the handling of a case backlog that had arisen as a result of the local government reform that took place in January 2007 and coincided with the establishment of the new job centres;
• the role played by the different district councils’ medical officers in relation to the assessment of when the ability to work of the individual client is permanently reduced to a level giving entitlement to early pension; and
• a number of organisational factors in the separate district councils, including centralisation of decision-making authority in the hands of a department manager or team/board and away from the individual case officers.