The Double Articulation of the Welfare-State: A demographic drop of jeopardy?

Many people are in danger of missing out on the welfare state that they helped to create. Many people are also missing out on having the chance of being a citizen in a welfare state, something that has been promised. Obviously we are talking about the Old EU Member states and of the New EU Member states and their still striking disparities in terms of both causes that are at the root of the demographic decline and the development of policies meant to either sustain or create a welfare state. Chronic demographic degradation – today’s silent emergency – threatens European citizens and undercuts their livelihood. What is at stake is not just an understanding of the welfare state, but its place according to the context of each European state. Traditional investigations upon the welfare state most of the time leave out the demographic transition and seldom it takes into consideration the fact that in our contemporary times the EU has two types of welfare states, in different stages of evolution and with a different context. Demographics, we argue, is changing both the welfare state through policies within the EU and within each individual country. It is also affecting the nature of actors and institutions in the EU politics. This requires change of a more fundamental kind, the cost of inadequate policies is clear. The debate between welfare state supporters and skeptics involves fundamental considerations about the nature of the economic European order – as it is and as it might be. We believe our research on demographics and the two stage welfare state that exists in the EU comes to complete this image. Disagreements can range from the philosophical point of view, concerned with conceptual and normative tools, empirical-analytical concerned firstly with the problems of understanding the welfare state and strategic, focused on the feasibility of moving from where we are now to where we would like to be in the future. We reject the assumption that one can construct a lasting welfare state without referring also to demographic structured and processes.