ABSTRACT
The 1990s were marked by rising prominence of social policy doctrines which entailed a departure from incrementalism, particularly that which is understood as improved benefit adequacy within the social insurance/ social assistance framework. At the centre of these doctrines is the idea that there is and must be a strong complementarity between labour participation and poverty reduction objectives. A noticeable exponent is the Netherlands, where a radical policy shift from passive benefit adequacy towards boosting labour market participation was initiated in the mid-1980s and where it has been vigorously pursued ever since. The Dutch government itself summed up its singular purpose in the catch phrase: ‘work, work, work’. The idea that employment growth and poverty reduction are natural allies is also remarkably central to policy at the eu level as it is now taking shape within the framework of the Open Method of Coordination (omc). On the employment front, the objectives are quite specific. There is the overall objective of increasing the employment ratio to 70 per cent by 2010 and, in addition, there are clear targets for specific subgroups of the population like women and older workers. On the poverty front, the ambitions remain less well-defined, but there is an effective commitment now to engage in serious efforts at the member country level to bring about significant reductions in relative income poverty, among other objectives. Though little is explicitly said in eu policy documents, aspirations in both domains are assumed to be complementary. Indeed, a very similar vocabulary is used to defend aspirations in both domains.
