The Randstad — A Welfare Region?

Abstract

The Dutch welfare state at present seems to be in dire straits. The costs of maintaining a very extensive system of social benefits rose very fast in the 1980s and have become an almost unbearable (or should we say intolerable?) burden. An increasing number of persons called upon the state for financial help in that decade. Especially the number of unemployed or disabled persons rose to unprecedented heights. The number of recipients of unemployment benefits rose from 230,000 in 1980 to 575,000 in 1989. In the same period the number of recipients of benefits for disability and illness increased from 886,000 to 1,093,000 (CBS 1991). Meanwhile, economic growth in the Netherlands had fallen to a postwar low; the average yearly growth per capita of gross domestic product for 1979–1988 was just 0.7 percent (OECD 1990). These two simultaneous developments made it increasingly difficult to sustain the existing welfare arrangements, let alone expand them in terms of benifits or eligibility. The Dutch welfare state had gone through a phase of ‘hyperbolic expansion’ (De Swaan 1988) between 1945 and 1974. Yet it was neither prepared nor designed for the new situation that arose after the first, and even more pronounced after the second oil crisis in 1979. Since then, all kinds of pressure groups have been able to mount stubborn, and in most cases effective, resistance against cuts in the welfare arrangements. The strain on the national budget due to the oilcrisis and the welfare lobby has led to recurrent national budget problems. Accordingly, the current national political debate is largely centered on the future of the welfare state.