ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates, the areas eligible for aid, and the nature of the assistance offered, has been subject to extensive alteration, while there has been a growing appreciation of the relationships between the problems of the congested West and those of provinces with weaker economic impetus. Under the new measures, the regional aid programme was expanded to include eight new districts which, together with south-east Drenthe, were allocated 51 million guilders, chiefly for the construction of industrial estates, for major road improvements, and for the expansion of technical education. A measure of the relative severity of regional unemployment is therefore necessary, and this has been provided in the table in the form of 'severity ratios', obtained by dividing the national unemployment rate into each of the regional rates. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, regional labour demand returned to more normal levels, and growth outside the West again took place, particularly in the South.
