Germany’s welfare state is complex. In many areas, legal frameworks contribute to restricted access – particularly for young people, who are often reached too late or in ways that prevent them from developing their full potential. In short: the system is neither especially efficient nor especially enabling.
Calls for “simplification” are growing louder in the context of the Commission on Welfare State Reform and the Child and Youth Welfare Reform. While the need for reform is broadly accepted, objectives differ: some advocate for better accessibility and effectiveness, while others prioritise efficiency gains, cost reduction, and streamlining of benefits. In polarised political debate, these two goals are frequently portrayed as incompatible.
Amid this debate, a central mandate of the welfare state is being lost sight of: enabling young people in particular to pursue life chances and self-determination. With a large number of fragmented benefits and high rates of non-take-up, the system currently functions poorly – empowerment and individual advancement are often hindered rather than facilitated.
Project goals
The project examines the Social Code (SGB) – specifically education-related social benefits aimed at enabling and supporting the educational pathways of young people. The goal is to identify the structural barriers within the SGB that block such benefits.
The project’s findings are intended not only to highlight reform needs at the legislative level. It also examines the concrete living situations of children, adolescents, and young adults, assessing which benefits exist in this area and how different groups are affected by various barriers.
The project aims to inform ongoing social policy reform debates and introduce an opportunity-focused perspective on welfare state modernisation. It identifies reform needs for an enabling welfare state that brings together accessibility and the capacity to act. We regard regulatory simplification and an outcome-oriented approach as necessary preconditions for state effectiveness.
Welfare state modernisation must go beyond a mere reform of social administration. It must design benefits in ways that enable people, and organise the welfare state to effectively deliver on that goal.
Torben Fischer – Project lead
Approach
The project analyses education-related social benefits within the SGB using an innovative, practice-oriented, and scalable approach. At its centre are two levers frequently understood as opposites:
Accessibility and functionality, to enable individual empowerment;
Efficiency, to secure state capacity to act and make freed-up resources available for targeted support.
Drawing on academic research into administration and bureaucracy reduction, the project uses AI-assisted analysis to identify where measures with the same objective “stack up” in legislation yet operate redundantly or in contradiction. These points indicate high potential for reforms that can improve both access and efficiency.
Projektteam
Torben Fischer
Senior Projektmanager
Torben Fischer kümmert sich am ZSP nicht nur um die Projektplanung und -steuerung, er ist außerdem für die Konzeption und Entwicklung von Studien und Projekten zuständig.
Maike Wittmann gestaltet beim ZSP die Entwicklung und Umsetzung zentraler Projekte und prägt mit ihrer Arbeit die anschlussfähige Aufbereitung der Ergebnisse.
