This book breaks new intellectual ground in the analysis of the German
welfare state. Bleses and Seeleib-Kaiser argue that we are witnessing a
dual transformation of the welfare state, which is caused by the
emergence of new dominating interpretative patterns. Increasingly, the
state reduces its social policy commitments towards securing the
achieved living standard of former wage earners, which in the past had
been the key normative principle of social policy in Germany, while at
the same time public support and services for families are expanded.