PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Crisis—What crisis? With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to state that the fiscal and economic crisis since 2007 has not shown an extensive influence on the German welfare system. It has to be kept in mind that the main crisis of the German welfare state lay already in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the country was internationally portrayed as a ‘conservative welfare state’ par excellence, being particularly struck by challenges such as new social risks and at the same time incapable of constitutive reforms. Then, however, path-shifting reforms in different social policy fields have been conducted, and it has partly been traced back to these reforms that Germany has turned from the “sick man of Europe” into an “economic model country”. In the chapter, we study which further pathways were taken in different areas of the German welfare system over the last years, in face of its major challenges—demographic change and restructuring the balance between policies providing for risks and policies enhancing opportunities. We find that overall the ‘new habits’ of the German welfare system have been continued, but that recently a stronger focus on risk prevention is re-emerging.