Tag: #Poverty & Inequality

The ‘basic income’ is in the spotlight: as an answer to technology that destroys jobs, as a method for creating more opportunities and less poverty, or as an alternative to the welfare state. This book offers a down-to-earth and critical analysis of what has become a real fashion phenomenon in the meantime. It contests both the desirability and the feasibility of a basic income. The …

In its New Year Letter, Itinera presents its ten wishes for 2016. With contributions of Leo Neels, Ivan Van de Cloot, Marc De Vos, Bilal Benyaich, Johan Albrecht, Jean Hindriks, Alexandre Simons en Simon Ghiotto

Marc De Vos argues that budget discipline can be a moral imperative when debt addiction has tied future generations to present spending. Excessive public debt is an organized regressive distribution of future prosperity to today’s rich.

We demonstrate that inflation is higher for low income households, retired households and young households of less than 25 years old. This result suggests that our indexation system, proportional to the health index, provides more protection to the rich than to the more vulnerable households. Read the complete report

Wouter Duyck and Frederik Anseel of the University of Ghent show clearly that late tracking has a negative impact on cognitive performances of students.

Now the amendments of the municipality decree and OCMW-decree are impending, a lot of politicians and official actors are intervening in this interesting debate and the apparent peace and calm on local, provincial and Flemish level is being disrupted. The impact of both decrees is of course very big. Myriam Deloddere, secretary of OCMW Wervik is giving her vision on how the fight against local …

The Itinera Brainstorm is an open reflection on social reforms by politicians, academics and stakeholders. With these new ideas we hope to keep, also in 2012, the debate alive in Belgium and its regions. More than 50 participants, more than 100 ideas!

Since higher education has been decentralized in Belgium, public financing of universities in both communities has almost been frozen. Students’ coaching has been continuously scrapped for the last forty years; which certainly does not help the graduation rate. Communities budgets have almost no room to increase means significantly. Therefore, tuition fees need to be increased. In order t…

Despite the favourable social-economical, demographical and policy parameters, we haven’t booked any progress in the fight against poverty during the last 20 years. The result of the welfare state based on activation policy and an attempt to nullify the so-called “new social risks” was less successful than envisaged. At the same time, the level of protection of the “old social risks” …

With a poverty rate of 15.2% in 2007, Belgium should consider its fight against poverty and social inequality more seriously than it does now. According to Johan Albrecht and Isabelle Martin, it needs to evaluate more regularly and more rigorously the effects of its anti-poverty policies in order to have a better idea of their real efficiency. Belgium also needs to pay more attention to improvi…