1. Poverty in Belgium anno 2012

2. 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

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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

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

8. 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
...

9. 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

10. 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 persons out of poverty

11. 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

12. Poverty in Belgium: indicators, targets, figures...
Comparison of Belgium with the EU27 average on some key indicators (EU-SILC 2010 unless
indicated otherwise)
-People living in households with very low work intensity (18-59)
-People at risk of poverty rate

13. Poverty in Belgium: indicators, targets, figures...
-Severely materially deprived people
-People at risk of poverty or social exclusion Europe 2020 Target: Belgium persons out of poverty.