Poverty in Belgium anno 2012 What does poverty

Poverty in Belgium anno 2012

What does poverty mean today ? - Poverty is often the result of social exclusion, which causes poverty which. . . - Poverty is not the problem of ‘poor people’, it’s not a characteristic, but an injustice, caused by structural choices - Poverty is a creation, a product of wrong structural choices

What does poverty mean today ? - Poor people should not be helped, but poverty should be erradicated - We don’t make distinction between ‘poor’ ‘poorest' - nevertheless, special attention for people who are vulnerable can be neccessary to prevent discrimination

What does poverty mean today ? - Relative poverty : everybody experiences poverty and social exclusion in his or her own way - The terminology ‘poverty’ isn’t based on the experience of people experiencing poverty and social exclusion

Causes - Social exclusion goes hand in hand with lack of knowledge : People don’t have access to the right information Young children, growing up in a family in situation of poverty/social exclusion, are not stimulated to read a lot

Causes - Poverty has structural causes, it's not something caused by individual behaviour People should get real chances to take responsability and fight poverty Our system is reproducing poverty

Recent developments in Belgium - Energy poverty - Raised poverty risk for lower middle class - Criminalisation of (people experiencing) poverty(‘socialfraud’GAS, Communal Administrative. Sanctions, …)

Impact of policies (National + EU) - As poverty is not a natural phenomenon, policies should get rid of it. The effect of contemporary policies is not strong enough, on the contrary, policies are (re)producing poverty Educational gap (fiscal inequality) Growing inequality. . .

Impact of policies (National + EU) - Policy often looks good on paper, but in practice, it’s often very difficult to obtain your rights (heating subvention OCMW) - Plans but no accountability

Poverty in Belgium: indicators, targets, figures. . . -In Belgium: wide sets of indicators and measurement. -There’s a process of linking them together, which is positive -Europe 2020 Target: Belgium 380. 000 persons out of poverty

Poverty in Belgium: indicators, targets, figures. . . ! No subtargets ! No yearly targets ! No targets for this legislation Groups of people experiencing poverty are not in the statistics: -homeless people -undocumented migrants

Poverty in Belgium: indicators, targets, figures. . . Comparison of Belgium with the EU 27 average on some key indicators (EU-SILC 2010 unless indicated otherwise) -People living in households with very low work intensity (18 -59) 12. 9 10. 2 -People at risk of poverty rate 14. 6 16. 4

Poverty in Belgium: indicators, targets, figures. . . -Severely materially deprived people 5. 9 8. 1 -People at risk of poverty or social exclusion 20. 8 23. 4 Europe 2020 Target: Belgium 380. 000 persons out of poverty.