Norway has a social system that includes government disability benefit, and in contrast to many other countries, it’s possible (but not easy) to live a good life with this benefit.
People who have a permanent injury, illness or disability can apply for disability benefit in Norway, but it’s actually very challenging to get it approved. But how much is the disability benefit for those who get it approved?
The disability benefit in Norway is based on paying out 66 % of their average salary of the last 3 out of 5 years before getting disability. However, the minimum disability benefit is 242,590 NOK (around $25,000) per year.
As you can imagine, this is not really a lot. 243 590 NOK per year is less than half of an average salary, so you do get some money, but not a lot. It’s definitely challenging to be able to life a nice life with this sum in Norway where everything is pretty expensive.
If you have worked for 5 years before getting the disability benefit, the sum should be 66 % of what you made on average. This means that you take 1/3 of a paycut if you end up on disability benefit. There is a max cap for how much you can make, currently set at 6 G (608 106) NOK, meaning that you get up to 401,350 NOK yearly in disability benefit.
Minimum disability benefits explained
I already mentioned the number 243 590 NOK as the absolute minimum you can get paid with disability benefit in Norway. But there are also some exceptions to this, so let’s take a closer look at the minimum disability benefit sum in Norway.
There are a total of four different minimum disability rates, and these changes year to year. The table below show the different groups and their minimum rate.
| Sum in 2022 numbers (per year) | Sum in 2022 numbers (per month) | Approximate in USD per month | Payment in Gs (more info below) | |
| Disability benefit living with a spouse / partner | 242,590 NOK | 20,215 NOK | $2,000 USD | 2.28 G |
| Disability benefit living alone | 263,870 NOK | 21,989 NOK | $2,200 USD | 2.48 G |
| Young disability benefit living with a spouse / partner | 283,021 NOK | 23,585 NOK | $2,400 USD | 2.66 G |
| Young disability benefit living alone | 309,621 NOK | 25,801 NOK | $2,600 USD | 2.91 G |
The table shows the four different groups and how much they get paid on the disability benefit as a minimum.
People who fall into the young disability benefit category are people who got permanently 100 % disability benefit before they turned 26 years old. In other words, people who never really got to work before becoming disabled or injured.
So what exactly is a G?
The G is a number used by NAV to calculate their payouts. The nice thing about G is that it changes in accordance with the economy every year, so that you can set fixed rates in G for all benefits, and these will all increase as the G increased.
1 G is 106 399 NOK in 2022, and it tends to increase with around 3 – 5 000 NOK per year.