Welfare states under pressure: Cash benefits in European welfare states over the last ten years

This article devotes itself to an examination of the substance of reform in European welfare states over the course of the last 10 years. Its objective is mainly empirical, to compare how cash transfers in the 15 member states of the European Union as well as Norway have fared over the decade. While the article is not theory-focused, consideration of some of the wider implications of the change process which is underway is a priority. It is especially important to examine not only how the procedures and principles governing benefits have altered but whether and how change is systematically patterned across welfare states. We shall observe that pensions, unemployment benefits, parental leave and payments for the care of ill, elderly and incapacitated people have been the main focus of policy activity. As a story of both cut-backs and expansion suggests, simplistic notions of convergence or divergence are not adequate to capture what is happening. The last part of the article considers how we might make our analytical frameworks equal to the richness of the reform process which is under way.