Multiple Links: Public policy, family exchanges, well-being and policy endorsement

Abstract

In a time when individuals prefer to operate as autonomous individuals, being dependent is often thought of as a negative state that is best overcome as soon as possible (Lee, 2002; Stone, 2010). Political institutions have a similar view when it comes to reliance on welfare services: welfare state services should support people for as short as possible so as to ensure that they are able to carry on living independently (Gilbert, 2004). Whereas the insistence on independence from welfare support has been present in US welfare politics from its beginning, it is relatively new in European welfare states such as The Netherlands (Hemerijck, 2013). European welfare systems used to be passive systems aimed at income maintenance but have transformed into activating systems aimed at maximizing labor market employment by stressing individual responsibility (Gilbert, 2004), and the Dutch welfare system forms no exception to this rule (Hemerijck & Marx, 2010). Due to the imminent unsustainability of generous social protection programs given aging populations, European welfare states have been retrenching (Pavolini & Ranci, 2008; Pierson, 2011). For many welfare states, this is a continuation of the transformation of welfare states into activating systems. The retrenchment of earlier welfare models into models stressing