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Welfare State Policies

Denmark is a welfare state. Arguably, the development of the welfare state over the last 120 years is one of the most striking features of Danish history and society. An indication of Hegel’s famous phrase that ‘the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk’, the crisis of the welfare state in the 1970s sparked an interest in understanding both the welfare state’s historical development as well as the changes that took place in the present. This chapter starts with defining the main characteristics of the Danish welfare state, followed by an outline of its historical development (organized around four historical phases) until the end of the ‘golden age’ in the 1970s. First, the following sections discuss the crisis of the Danish welfare state and the main challenges confronting the Danish welfare model since the 1970s. Second, they offer an overview of the main trends of policy change over the last four decades. Developments over the last 3–4 decades have triggered an ongoing academic and public discussion on the nature of the changes: are these changes taking place within the paradigm of the classic Danish welfare state, or are they leading towards a new paradigm?