A Coat of Many Colours: Welfare Reform around the World

Ross Mackay

Welfare reform has recently become a high-profile political issue for many countries, due to welfare systems all over the world coming under pressure from a number of sources, including demographic change, social transformations, economic difficulties and fiscal pressure. These changes have resulted in an escalating demand for social security expenditure, yet system administrators are simultaneously under pressure to reduce expenditure.

This paper looks at how these changes have affected four countries (the US, UK, Netherlands and Latin America) and how they have reacted in terms of welfare reform. In the US the focus has been on lone parents, in the UK on the unemployed, in the Netherlands on reforming disability programmes, and in Latin America on pension reform. Despite this wide diversity in focus, common themes emerge in the reforms enacted. These all have echoes in New Zealand, although the one instance where New Zealand changes have been at variance has been in pensions policy.

The conclusion drawn is that New Zealand shares the same preoccupations with welfare reform as other countries because it shares the same underlying pressures, but it has chosen its own distinctive path, tailored to its own circumstances.