Describe The Welfare State And Its History In Holland Case Study

Chapter 1: Welfare State
Describe the welfare state and its history in Holland

Background information
Up and till the end of the 19th century, people living on the countryside in The Netherlands, were used to living together and taking care of each other when needed. Whole families lived near each other, and supervised their children, took care of the sick, helped with birth and death, trained each other for work, and countless of other things. They were solidary to one another. But when in the 1840s the majority of the potato harvests failed, and people did not have enough food and income to take care of themselves, let alone their family, their attitude towards government help changed. As a result of the lack of work in agriculture, urbanisation
People lost their jobs, and started wandering around the country in hope for a better life.

First social security laws
In 1874, the first law reducing child labour, also known as “Kinderwetje van Van Houten”, was passed. Although the law was not very effective in the first place, it was the first step to banning child labour. Kinderwetje van Van
Houten forbade children up to 12 years-old to work in factories. The law was not checked, so employers kept using children. In 1901, a law was passed which made sure to give workers medical and financial support when needed after an accident. Child labour. This is what Kinderwetje and other laws tried to ban
Before the
The working class was extremely poor, insecure, and did not have equal rights to other classes. Because of this, a conflict between classes became more and more likely in the Netherlands. The liberal political elite realised that something needed to be done. In order to stop violent revolt, the cause needed to be tackled. They made sure to give the working class more right, improve their working conditions. Several really important laws were made, such as Universal Suffrage. This enabled men and women from a certain age to vote in elections.

After the war
After the war, the Dutch social security system changed. Using the English one as an example, the Netherlands expanded their social security system, in such a way that everybody would benefit from it in the same way. The government, together with everyone that paid for the social security system, covered all the costs. The Labour Party agreed to this, but the KVP and the Catholic unions did not. They wanted the government to be less involved. This disagreement was the beginning of a lot of conflicts and arguments between the two groups.

Because the religious parties lost a lot of support around the 60s, they had to agree on an inclusive and universal type of social security system. Under control of Joop van den Uyl, the