Personnumber

A personnumber, or personal identification number, is a unique numeric identifier assigned to an individual by a government or competent authority to identify that person across civil, healthcare, taxation, and public service systems. The primary purpose is to enable reliable record-keeping, proper service delivery, and efficient administration, while reducing the need to handle multiple unrelated identifiers.

In Sweden, the term personnummer refers to a 10-digit national identity number used for official dealings. It is commonly written as YYMMDD-XXXX, with the first six digits encoding the birth date. The four-digit serial number distinguishes individuals born on the same date, and, in many cases, the gender can be inferred from the serial. People aged 100 or more may have a plus sign instead of a hyphen between the date and the serial. The Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket) assigns and maintains personnummer.

Other Nordic and Baltic countries use similar concepts under different names, such as Finland’s henkilötunnus, Denmark’s CPR-nummer, and Norway’s fødselsnummer. These numbers generally serve the same roles: identification for taxation, healthcare, social security, and access to public services, and they may also be used for banking, employment, and travel documentation.

Because a personnumber ties together a wide range of personal records, its handling is regulated by privacy and data protection laws, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Access to and sharing of personnummer data is restricted and controlled, and individuals may request corrections if birth dates, names, or other identifiers change. In some cases non-residents or temporary residents may receive a form of number to enable service access.