Non-take-up of social benefits is a matter of interest among governmental bodies and scientists since the late 1960s in the Netherlands. First, the Dutch social security system is briefly presented in order to outline the context in which the non-take-up issued has emerged in the Netherlands. Second, non-take-up research is presented into a historical perspective. Therefore two periods out are singled out, in which the perspective and the scope of the academic research is investigated against the light of the perspective of the commissioners.

As in many Western countries people’s concerns for the care of those in need are pretty old in the Netherlands. Indeed local initiatives in favour of assistance to the homeless in the Dutch cities can be traced back to the middle ages. Similarly, the Dutch state is very old – as a matter of fact much older than most of the neighbouring states. However, the commitment of the Dutch state is very recent in the field of assistance to the poor. So is the development of welfare arrangements for all citizens. Anyway, in spite of the late birth of the Dutch welfare state, it was developed quite far compared to other European welfare states. Moreover the Dutch case illustrates rather well the combination of several logics in the development of the welfare state, notably the “insurance logic” and the “assistance logic” to which special attention is paid in the frame of the EXNOTA project. First of all, the insurance logic was developed in the Netherlands with regard to the commitment of the state in welfare by the means of the setting of welfare provisions partly based on employers’ and employees’ contributions. Nevertheless, a significant development can be observed along the two last decades, from a prevailing emphasis laid on the insurance logic towards a growing emphasis laid on the assistance logic with the development of benefits limited to the most deprived households.

In the Netherlands scientists are both witnesses of the emergence of the non-take-up theme in the Netherlands and key-actors of such a development. Moreover, one can notice - over the last decades - a shift in the perspective in which non-take-up is dealt with by Dutch scientists. First of all, it was primarily a matter of interest for scientists involved in the study of the relevance of the developed means for policy implementation. Their perspective was rather critical but the scientists managed to get funds from some ministries which were rather open to critical research. One can also notice that these ministries were not so much under high pressure at that time. Later on, non-take-up became a matter of interest for a “bigger” ministry, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, at a time of growing pressure in the discussions about the future of the welfare system. The research has been conducted by a new generation of academics who expressed concerns about the major developments in the reform of the welfare state, namely the development of the means-tested benefits parallel to the development of a stable group of people in state of exclusion towards the social benefits system. Compared to the early 1990s period the topic is dealt with by a larger group of scientists for which it is striking that most of them are mainly committed in studies of persistent poverty in spite of the economic recovery in the early 1990s. Non-take-up is then part of studies focused on the sociological observation of social exclusion and modern poverty in a greater extent than in a perspective of political analysis of the developments in government.


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