All Persons Work Modern Danish Labour Market Policies

Since the start in 1978 labour market policies in Denmark have undergone several transformations, and experiences of the effects on different labour market policies have been made. Due to the high quality and availability of relevant data, Danish evaluation studies provide ample knowledge of activation. The Danish case is also interesting for political reasons. The OECD and the EU often make activation in Denmark a model of best practice that other countries may learn from (OECD 2006, Madsen 2003). 

This paper contributes to a better understanding of the changing nature of Danish labour market policies and experiences made. The paper sets out the Danish situation of the political ideas of activation (Sect. 2), changing target groups (Sect. 3), labour law (Sect. 4), unemployment insurance (Sect. 5), activation (Sect. 6), and their outcomes (Sect. 7). 

2 General orientation of the political ideas of Danish activation activation as a concept 

But activation has had a revival of more recent origins. In the US activation blossomed under the title of workfare with the Welfare Act of 1996, although work-fare was already prevalent in many states several years before 1996. In Sweden active labour market policies were part and parcel of the Swedish welfare state package, the so-called Rehn-Meidner model from the 1930s that offered the unemployed cash benefits and job offers, training and education. With the evolution of the welfare state after the Second World War, Denmark enacted active labour market policy to boost employment and fight unemployment, not least inspired by Sweden. 

In Denmark the ideas of workfare and active labour market policies slowly made an impression as politicians realised that the problems sparked off by the first oil crisis were of a more permanent nature and that these problems could not be solved with conventional Keynesian demand-side policy. 

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Making All Persons Work Modern Danish Labour Market Policies... 

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