From Dutch Disease to Dutch Fitness? Two Decades of Disability Crisis in the Netherlands

Abstract

In 1990, the then Dutch prime minister, Ruud Lubbers, declared that ‘the Netherlands is ill’. In that year the number of recipients of the Dutch Disability Benefit was close to 900,000, representing almost 15% of the working population. Twelve years later, the 2 May 2002 issue of The Economist published an article, in which the following statement concerning the Dutch disability system was made: ‘it is the very need for consensus that has inhibited further reforms to the much-abused and excessively generous disability system, which pays out to a ludicrous one in seven Dutch people of working age’. These quotes illustrate that the Dutch ‘disability crisis’ is far from a recent phenomenon and that the reforms introduced during the 1980s and 1990s had not been able to turn the tide. Nevertheless, as will be elaborated below, the current picture is more positive — although the risk of a ‘new’ disability crisis lies in wait.