Welfare state development and employment in the Netherlands in comparative perspective

In recent years it has been said that the Dutch welfare state has been made fit for employment growth. This development is praised as part of the so-called Dutch 'Delta model' which since the mid-1980s has been very succesful in labour market terms. Some 20 years ago, when unemployment started to soar, the high level of social security was seen, by contrast, as an aspect of the 'Dutch disease'. Employing a typology based on regulative assumptions of dealing with market risks and aberrations, this paper briefly analyses the subsequent stages of Dutch welfare state development: from a predominantly Christian- paternalist system to social-democratization from the mid-1960s and then to a certain degree of liberalization since the mid-1980s. The structural or institutional inertia of the original system should not be overlooked, however. Comparative investigation reveals that the current Dutch welfare state, in spite of retrenchment measures, still belongs to the most generous ones in the western world, which allows only for relatively low, though rising, levels of poverty and inequality. And it is questionable whether and to what extent retrenchment has contributed to the impressive, although largely part-time-based rise in the Dutch employment rate. In any case non-employment, broadly understood as different from registered unemployment, has not declined in the Netherlands. It has been redistributed to other categories, particularly to the disability scheme. Like other continental countries, the Netherlands still seems to face the dilemma of work and welfare.