Poor Europe : the problem of poverty in chosen European countries

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POOR EUROPE

The Problem of Poverty in Chosen European Countries

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POOR EUROPE

The Problem of Poverty in Chosen European Countries

Edited by

Grzegorz Libor, Dorota Nowalska-Kapuścik

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego • Katowice 2015

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Referee

Anna Śliz

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Introduction / 7

Griet Roets, Rudi Roose, Johan Vandenbussche, Tineke Schiettecat, Michel Vandenbroeck Belgium / 15

Maria Jeliazkova Bulgaria / 41

Zdenko Babić, Danijel Baturina Croatia / 59

Gill Main England / 87

Heikki Hiilamo, Juha Mikkonen Finland / 109

Stefán Ólafsson, Guðný Björk Eydal Iceland / 127

Rose Marie Azzopardi Malta / 145

Dorota Nowalska-Kapuścik Poland / 165

Daniela Sime Scotland / 177

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Nada Stropnik Slovenia / 193 Montserrat Simó-Solsona Spain / 213

Monica Budowski, Maurizia Masia, Robin Tillmann Switzerland / 235

Grzegorz Libor Wales / 259 Conclusions / 271

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Europe is one of the richest continents of the modern world. In 2009, taking ad- vantage of the financial crisis that hit hardest the United States, Europe overtook its main competitor, accumulating in its resources the largest assets of the world.

The report published by The Boston Consulting Group entitled “Wealth of the World 2009” indicates that due to the crisis the United States has lost about 22%

of them, which was over 8 billion dollars. It means that today the value of all assets that have remained in the hands of US investors is 29,3 billion dollars, while their European counterparts have accumulated the assets worth over 32,7 billion dollars (The Boston Consulting Group 2009).

However, despite this optimistic news everyday practice gives us a slightly different picture. Seventeen percent of the European population is not able to meet basic living needs. Moreover, taking into account the fact that poverty, according to wide range of available definitions, can take and actually takes different forms the problem seems to be growing. As the most recent data of European Statistical Office (Eurostat) show, the phenomenon of poverty and social exclusion affects nearly 125 million EU citizens (24.8%)!

The figures are alarming; hence it is not surprising that the problem of poverty, in addition to unemployment, with which it remains in strong correlation, is one of the main points on a long list of difficulties and challenges facing Europe today.

Of course, not all its regions are exposed to the problem of poverty to the same extent. Poverty is one of these problems which are strongly differentiated when it comes to their territorial characteristics. Nevertheless, it does not mean that there are countries for which social exclusion and poverty are completely unknown. The most difficult situation occurs in Bulgaria, Romania, Spain, Greece, and Lithuania, while the greatest differences in incomes are recorded in Spain, Latvia, and Bulgar- ia. More or less in the middle of the scale of not only the risk of poverty but also the spread of income (Federal Statistical Office 2010) are Ireland, Germany, and Malta. Austria and the Czech Republic seem to be in the most privileged situation.

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This picture cannot, however, be regarded as a complete reflection of reality. Nonetheless, as in the case of any other social phenomenon, there is reason to believe that statistical data do not always reflect the scale of the problem. Beside actual figures there is always individual, subjective perception of being at risk of poverty and social exclusion. The research carried out by the European Commis- sion show that the average citizen of the European Union is not only afraid of poverty, but also says that this problem affects 39% of people in his or her immediate surroundings. That is why preventing poverty and social consolidation policy focused on the development of appropriate methods of dealing with poverty, as well as constant collection of data illustrating the progress in realizing the objectives, now have a privileged position among different activities taken within economic and social policy of the European Union.

The main goal of this publication was not only to collect the articles recognizing the phenomenon of poverty in selected European countries, but also to use a comparative and multidimensional approach to identify the most important transformations taking place in this field in the whole Europe. Moreover, we still have the impression that there is a serious deficit of such studies in the publish- ing market. This encouraged us to contact European experts, specialists, and sci- entists with a request to prepare reports on the problem of poverty and social exclusion in their own countries. Finally, the publication contains the analysis of the following countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, England, Finland, Iceland, Mal- ta, Poland, Scotland, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and Wales.

The first article written by Griet Roets, Rudi Roose, Johan Vandenbussche, Tineke Schiettecat, and Michel Vandenbroeck concentrates on the example of Belgium. Although Belgium is one of the richest countries in Europe, poverty is a reality for an important part of the Belgian population. Although the amount of people in poverty remains rather stable, a growing number of people experience difficulties to make ends meet. In this contribution, two dimensions of social policy in Belgium, and more specifically in Flanders, are discussed, that is, user participation and combating child poverty. Using the analytical framework on social justice by Nancy Fraser, it is argued that these anti-poverty strategies risk depoliticizing the social problem of poverty in policy and practice.

The idea of user participation and fighting child poverty are implemented in such ways that citizens struggling poverty have to learn to cope with individual psychosocial effects and empower themselves as a result of living in poverty rather than that the welfare state challenges and tackles oppressive power relationships, structural social inequalities and injustice rooted in the political-economic structure of society. Although both user participation and combating child poverty happen under the cover of empowering the poor, oppressive power relationships and social inequalities in Belgian society tend to remain out of the picture and the responsibility, for fighting poverty seems to be easily indi- vidualized.

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Another article, prepared by Maria Jeliazkova, discusses poverty in Bul- garia—basic dimensions, generators, consequences, and appropriate policies. High levels of poverty of various vulnerable groups, including working people and retir- ees with 40 years of service question the ability of the current social policy measures to overcome the widespread poverty through fragmented and focused on the deep poverty pockets measures. The article argues that the main poverty generators are the policies of distribution and redistribution, which increase inequalities and squeeze huge groups of people on the fringes of society. Widespread poverty in the country is human made and socially constructed. Enlightened pro-developmental strategy is necessary to combat poverty, to terminate the operation of the extracting in private group interest institutions, and to stimulate socio-economic dynamics based on common interest.

The article written by Zdenko Babić and Danijel Baturina gives an overview of the characteristics and ways of fighting poverty in Croatia. The first part focuses on demographic-social-spatial characteristics of poverty. First, the authors look at the researches about poverty in Croatia during the socialist period and in first years of Croatia independence. After that the article proceeds to show the risk of poverty rates since the start of the official measurement of poverty in 2001. In addition, the authors observe statistically data that give them an insight into the state of poverty by socio-demographic characteristics such as gender, age, education, size, and economic activity of the household. Also, they analyze their previous research on subjective poverty, briefly describe the impact of the economic crisis and identify new potential groups in risk of poverty. In the second part of this paper, Zdenko Babić and Danijel Baturina focus on the measures and programs to combat poverty in Croatia, and also their hitherto effectiveness. Special attention was drawn to the development of strategic documents in the context related to poverty. They have also considered the status of economic development and particularly looked at social transfers and other possible tools for combating poverty in Cro- atia. The conducted analysis provided the authors of the article with an integrative view of poverty trends by different aspects and (in) effectiveness of anti-poverty strategies and programs which are aimed at poverty alleviation in Croatia.

The problem of poverty in England was depicted by Gill Main. England, along with the rest of the United Kingdom, was part of the sixth-largest economy in the world (as of 2013), and the third largest in Europe after France and Germa- ny. Given this, its relative income poverty rate of 16% (based on the percentage of the population with a household income below 60% of the equivalized median), placing the UK 14th out of the EU countries for which there was relevant data, is a cause for concern. Clearly, high levels of wealth are not translating into high standards of living for all. The work of several pioneers in the study of poverty in England has informed the politics and measurement of poverty in the country. This article begins with providing a brief history of anti-poverty policy and the measurement of poverty in England. It proceeds to examine current political

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debates around poverty. Finally, data on poverty rates and risk factors in England from the largest-scale study of poverty in the United Kingdom to date—the 2012 UK Poverty and Social Exclusion Study—have been presented.

In another paper, Heikki Hiilamo and Juha Mikkonen focus on the extent and nature of the poverty problem in Finland. Towards the end of the 1980s, the golden years of the Nordic welfare state, poverty was almost eradicated in Finland. The deep recession in the early 1990s increased unemployment dramatically and thus led to cuts in social benefits. The following years of rapid economic growth did not lift all the boats. Finnish NGOs began delivering food assistance to the individuals in need. Relative poverty rates continued to increase and long-term unemployment became a persistent social problem. The global recession that began with the advent of 2008 aggravated the poverty problem (OECD 2011). From a comparative perspective, poverty rates in Finland are still lower than in many other EU and OECD countries. The future challenge for poverty alleviation in Finland is to fight long-term unemployment and provide adequate assistance to those who are excluded from the labor market.

The article prepared by Stefán Ólafsson and Guðný Björk Eydal profiles the extent and characteristics of economic poverty in Iceland. The outcomes are explained with references to the redistributive characteristics of the Icelandic welfare state and the high level of work participation of Icelanders, including members of groups that are generally at considerable risk of falling into poverty. Iceland has a low level of relative poverty as well as a low level of severe material deprivation.

At the same time, Iceland has not as low a level of households experiencing great difficulty in making ends meet. In fact, this measure of financial hardship places Iceland at a higher level than the other Nordic nations. This higher level of com- plaints may be due to a high level of debt burden (associated with a high level of home ownership in Iceland). The greater reliance on employment participation for maintaining their living standards may involve generally tighter financial situation in Icelandic households. The financial crisis that hit Iceland exceptionally hard in the autumn of 2008 greatly increased the feelings of financial hardships, with the proportion of households complaining about great difficulty in making ends meet more than doubling. Still the levels of relative poverty and severe material deprivation were kept at a low level by international standards.

The author of the subsequent article Rose Marie Azzopardi analyzes the poverty situation in Malta. She presents data to explain and understand the scale of the problem. Poverty tends to be more pronounced at certain ages (children, youths, and the elderly), particular vulnerable groups (such as single mothers and immi- grants), and can also be geographically clustered. Over the past years, poverty has continued to increase rather than decrease, even though the social security system is considered to be a generous one. However, there are different factors leading a person into poverty, or not allowing this person to exit poverty. Education and employment are best policies to activate towards the minimization of poverty.

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However, other issues such as housing, access to societal resources and opportunities, are factors which need to be tackled within a longer term perspective. The Poverty Green Paper launched in 2014 takes such a multifaceted dimension. Fur- thermore, the budget for 2015 with the message of “creating possibilities and not dependencies,” seems to be the first step towards a new direction of changing attitudes within society and targeting certain groups. It is hoped that the strategies, and apparent dedication of professionals and volunteers working in the sector, can eventually work for the benefit of the more vulnerable individuals within Maltese society.

Poverty in Poland was described by Dorota Nowalska-Kapuścik. The article attempts to systematize the data on the extent and characteristics of the Polish dimension of poverty. The first part of the article was devoted to theoretical considerations, defining the analyzed phenomenon and identifying the key, from the point of view of Polish law, ways of looking at the problem. The following part presents the basic data reflecting the geographic and demographic diversity of poverty over the last several years in Poland. The author also depicted the key strategic actions taken by the Polish government (focus on preventing poverty), and non-governmental organizations providing assistance to the poor.

Another country depicted in the publication is Scotland. Its author, Daniela Sime, gives an overview of current developments and approaches to tackling poverty and social inequalities in Scotland and examines how the problem of poverty has been reflected in current welfare debates, which were central to the Inde- pendence Referendum which took place in Scotland in 2014. Scotland is a small country, with a population of just over 5 million people at the last Census in 2011.

The last fifteen years have seen a profound transformation in Scotland’s political landscape. Since the devolved Parliament established in 1999, the issue of a ‘fair- er Scotland’ which could break away from the Westminster-based Parliament and manage its own resources, has remained a constant aspect of political and public debate. Poverty rates in Scotland remain higher than in other European countries, with about 20% of its population living in poverty, despite the country being one of the richest among the OECD countries. When compared with other small Eu- ropean countries like Denmark, Norway, and Netherlands, where only about 10%

of people live in poverty, the situation in Scotland has often been described by pol- iticians and activists as “shocking” and “unacceptable.”

The paper about Slovenia was prepared by Nada Stropnik. According to the researcher the relative poverty risk has increased by more than three percentage points in Slovenia since the start of the global financial and economic crisis, but is still among the lowest in the EU-28 (14.5% in 2013), particularly for children (14.7%) and the working-age population (13%). Serious austerity measures were implemented only in June 2012, but the most vulnerable children (families with children) have been exempt from cuts in entitlements. The decline in economic activity has strongly and disproportionally affected young people (aged 18–24

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years) in particular. Their risk of poverty has almost doubled in the period from 2009 to 2013 (from 7.7% to 14.2%). In the last decade, the at-risk-of-poverty rate for persons aged 65 years and over has been oscillating close to 20%, which is one of the highest rates in the EU-28. The pensioners’ socio-economic position has been worsening since the pension reform implemented in 2000 and also due to a decline in the real value of pensions as well as the 2012 social benefits reform. The effectiveness of social transfers is evident from a considerable difference between pre-transfer and post-transfer (pensions not included) risk of poverty: 25.3% and 14.5%, respectively, for the total population of Slovenia in 2013.

Another paper written by Montserrat Simó-Solsona is about poverty in Spain.

The social structure in Spain, among other factors, is being fragmented by the impact of poverty. This social problem is not new but is especially important in times of crisis, when figures have soared and extended towards groups of population that have been safe until now. The downward spiral towards poverty and social exclusion is closely related to the present economic recession featuring high unemployment rates and low-payed jobs. Furthermore, the housing market has also become a trap that has impoverished families far away from guaranteeing such basic needs as accommodation. The social policies implemented within the framework of the Spanish welfare state cannot combat the poverty rates. These policies have had a shock-absorbing role, but they are not enough to face up to the austerity strategy implemented by the administrations. In conclusion, this situation pos- es a social problem today, but it will also determine the future generations of the country.

The article elaborated by Monica Budowski, Maurizia Masia, and Robin Till- mann presents a cursory overview of poverty research and poverty policies in Switzerland. The Helvetian peculiarity in comparison to other countries is the lack of a uniform national poverty research and national poverty policy. This particu- larity is explained from a historical perspective. The increase in social assistance provided to the recipients in the mid-1970s, after a long period of continuous decline, triggered research on poverty. In the course of its development and differen- tiation over time, five stages of poverty research with different perspectives were identified. The different stages give rise to corresponding policy measures: first group-specific instruments and social welfare (in particular social assistance) followed by a more broad approach that takes into account the varied conditions of life. Research on the dynamics of poverty leads to a greater focus on the importance of employment and the work-life/work-family policies (minimum wage, child-care). Research on wealth points towards issues of taxation. Given the lack of a uniform national policy, the Swiss approach to deal with poverty is broad and takes into account various policy fields: from social insurance and social assistance across minimum wages and contracts in the field of labor market policies to the field of culture policies addressing social exclusion. The paper concludes with challenges Switzerland faces in terms of research and policies.

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Last but not least is the article on Wales prepared by Grzegorz Libor. Its main aim was to depict the problem of poverty in Wales which seems to be quite particular, taking into account the limitations imposed by the power devolution phenomenon on the capabilities of both the Welsh government and National Assem- bly for Wales in fighting against its negative consequences and sources. Devolution not only made their creation possible but also provided them with some compe- tencies that are still quite different from “normal” and leave much to be desired.

Under these exceptional circumstances the Welsh authorities must deal with various problems, for example those resulting from poverty. Here the most important issues are child poverty and a high level of economic inactivity of Welsh inhabitants. Because of the abovementioned legal barriers the Welsh government pre- pares all its strategies assuming the participation of NGOs which are not dependent to such type of restrictions.

Although we are aware of significant definitional differences and various perspectives illustrated in this book we perceive them rather as its strength, not as its weakness. We believe that the methods used to prevent and reduce the negative effects of poverty in different regions of Europe depicted in this book may serve as inspiration to take similar actions in other parts of Europe.

We hope that the presented considerations will find their continuation in prac- tical terms as a point of departure for activities involving not only scientific and academic institutions, but also governments, NGOs, and other actors for whom the problem of poverty is not indifferent.

We would like to extend special thanks to Professor Anna Śliz from the Uni- versity of Opole for the revision of our publication and all remarks. We would also like to give special thanks to Professor Andrzej Noras, Vice-Dean for academic matters in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Silesia, for organizational support. This book would not have been complete without the technical and linguistic effort of employees of the University of Silesia Press to whom we would like to express our gratitude as well.

The Editors

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Tineke Schiettecat, Michel Vandenbroeck

Ghent University

BELGIUM

Introduction

Conceptualizations of poverty and anti-poverty policy-making are closely inter- related. As Lister (2004, 12) indicates, “How we define poverty is critical to political, policy and academic debates; it is bound up with explanations and has im- plications for solutions.” Also Veit-Wilson (2000) observes that the ways in which poverty and anti-poverty policy-making are defined and pursued are influenced by prevailing welfare state regimes in which notions of anti-poverty policy-making depend largely on their respective social, political, and ideological contexts and motives.

In that vein we describe the social problem of poverty and social exclusion in Belgium, and address how anti-poverty strategies are accordingly developed by the Belgian welfare state, with a specific focus on two spearheads of social policy as elaborated in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium). First, we clarify our theoretical and conceptual frame of reference, which is necessary to address how a welfare state attempts to pursue social justice in the case of poverty and social exclusion. Second, we briefly explain the institutional architecture of the welfare state system in Belgium, represent some topical facts and figures to give an overall picture of the social problem of poverty and social exclusion in Belgium, and elucidate the main welfare state arrangements to combat poverty and social exclusion.

Third, we address how Belgian, and more specifically Flemish, anti-poverty strategies also have their own historical and actual accents on top of organizational and institutional complexities. In that sense, we attempt to address and analyze the underlying original rationales and current interpretations of two topical spearheads of Flemish anti-poverty policy: user participation and child poverty.

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Pursuing Social Justice in the Case of Poverty and Social Exclusion

For us, the issue of citizenship is essential in our analysis of problems of poverty and social exclusion. The concept of citizenship refers to the ways in which the re- lationship between the individual and the state is constructed, and this relation- ship between the individual and the state can be constructed in different ways depending on different underlying assumptions about the responsibilities of citizens and the state (Roets, Dean, and Bouverne-De Bie, in press). In reality, many Euro- pean societies are characterized by the dynamics of poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization (Kabeer 2005). Also in Belgium, the citizenship of many people who are living in poverty is not put into practice, leading to their second-class citizenship (Roets and Roose 2014). In that sense, Lister (2004) asserts that the realization of the citizenship of people in poverty should be perceived as vital to human dignity. The experience of people in poverty of not being recognized as citizens is frequently identified, and refers to the discrepancy between their formal cit- izenship (embodied as an entitlement and a status) and their de facto citizenship (constructed through the experience of being a member of a particular community and society in practice) (Lister 2004).

In the literature, a social justice framework has been developed (see Fraser 1995; 1996; 2000; Lister 2002; 2004) to analyze whether welfare states, while im- plementing anti-poverty strategies, embody a politics of recognition of difference or/and a politics of redistribution of both material and immaterial resources in order to guarantee that citizens, including people in poverty, can realize their citizenship and lead a life in human dignity. In this framework, social justice is understood as encompassing two analytically distinct dimensions: “a dimension of recognition, which concerns the effects of institutionalized meanings and norms on the relative standing of social actors; and a dimension of distribution, which in- volves the allocation of disposable resources to social actors” (Fraser 2000, 116).

Fraser (2000) considers these two dimensions as inter-imbricated: the first dimen- sion is perceived as cultural, corresponding to the status order of society by so- cially entrenched patterns of cultural value; whereas the second dimension is con- sidered as economic, corresponding to the economic structure of society. Back in 1996, however, Fraser (1996, 3–4) observed:

In general, we are confronted with a new constellation. The discourse of social justice, once centered on distribution, is now increasingly divided between claims for redistribution, on the one hand, and claims for recognition, on the other. Increasingly too, recognition claims tend to dominate. […] The rise of “identity politics” in both its fundamentalist and progressive forms […] have conspired to de-center, if not to extinguish, claims for egalitarian redistribution […] and to decouple the cultural politics of difference from the social politics of equality.

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Vandenbroeck (2006) calls this the “culturalization of inequality.” In that vein, Fraser (1995, 69) argues that social policy that strives for social justice “requires both redistribution and recognition.” In her later work, she also adds a third di- mension leading to social injustice which is political, including for example deci- sion-making procedures that systematically marginalize some people. Therefore, Fraser (2000, 113) focuses on recognition as a question of social status that requires participatory parity, or the status of individual citizens

as full partners in social interaction. […] Misrecognition, accordingly, […] [implies] social subordination – in the sense of being prevented from participating as a peer in social life. To redress this injustice […] means a politics aimed at over- coming subordination by establishing the misrecognized party as a full member of society, capable of participating on a par with the rest.

In that sense, she argues, only by considering both dimensions (recognition and redistribution) together can one determine what is impeding the third dimension (participatory parity): redressing misrecognition means replacing institutionalized value patterns that impede parity of participation with ones that enable and foster it; but also requires a politics of redistribution since “equal participation is also impeded when some actors lack the necessary resources to interact with others as peers” (Fraser 2000, 116). Therefore, we adopt a multi-dimensional definition of poverty and social exclusion, which implies that this social problem should be understood as a combination of: (1) a lack of material resources (such as financial resources, housing, or an economic dimension); (2) dynamics of social exclusion resulting in a lack of immaterial resources (such as a lack of education, health care, or a cultural dimension), and (3) material as well as immaterial deprivation, resulting in processes of marginalization (or a dimension of participatory parity) (Bouverne-De Bie 2003).

Inspired by this frame of reference, we proceed to explain and analyze how the Belgian welfare state pursues social justice in the case of the social problem of poverty and social exclusion.

Poverty and Anti-Poverty Policy in Belgium

In the following section, we first briefly explain the institutional architecture of the welfare state system in Belgium. Second, we represent some topical facts and figures to give an overall picture of the social problem of poverty and social exclusion in Belgium. Third, we elucidate the main welfare state arrangements to combat poverty and social exclusion.

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Belgium, the Institutional Context

In the course of six state reforms, Belgium evolved from a unitary state into a federal state with all the complexities that it implies. At the beginning of 2014, Belgium had a population of over 11 million inhabitants. Essential building blocks are the Federal State, the Communities (the Flemish Community, the French Community and the German-speaking Community) and the Regions (the Flemish Region, the Brussels Capital Region, and the Walloon Region). These three are legally equal, be it that their powers and responsibilities differ. Broadly spoken, the Communities deal with issues of language and culture; whereas the Regions are responsible for issues related to economic interests. The Federal State rests in charge of issues such as foreign affairs or national defense but also social security. Some competences, powers, and responsibilities are shared between the Federal state and Communi- ties or Regions, which makes the Belgian institutional architecture rather complex.

The multi-level nature of the Belgian institutional context also has implica- tions for the organization of social policy. The core of the social security system is situated on the Federal level. The same is the case for the minimum income schemes that are part of the social protection system. However, social policy has a much broader scope and implies interventions on specific policy domains and/

or towards specific target groups. The operationalization of a welfare policy is the responsibility of the Communities, which implies, amongst other things, the organization of local Public Social Welfare Centers (PSWC)¹ present in each municipality (586 in total for the whole of Belgium). Considering the recognition of the multi-dimensional nature of poverty problems in Belgium, also the Regions (can) contribute to a social policy that contributes to the fight against poverty as they are responsible for policy domains such as housing, economic development, etc.

Poverty and Social Exclusion in Belgium: Facts and Figures According to a definition of poverty that includes the lack of material and immaterial social resources (Lister 2004), an analysis of the EU-SILC data shows that 15.1% (EU-SILC 2013) of the total population in Belgium runs the risk of ending up in poverty. In the European context, Belgium scores beneath the mean figure of 16.8% (EU-28). To give an indication, this implies that, according to the European 60% of the median standard, they live in a household earning less than 1,074 EUR/

month if they are single, or 2,256 EUR/month if the family consists of 2 adults and 2 children (younger than 14). As shown in Table 1, this percentage remains rath-

1 Translations in Belgium are threefold: Public Social Welfare Center = Openbaar Centrum voor Maatschappelijk Welzijn—OCMW (Flemish Community), Centre Publique d’Action sociale—

CPAS) (French Community), and Öffentliches Sozialhilfe Zentrum—OSHZ (German-speaking Community).

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er stable over the last 5 years yet there is an increasing number of people who are at-risk-of-poverty.²

Table 1. At-risk-of-poverty (AROP), (Belgium, SILC 2009–2013)

SILC 2009 SILC 2010 SILC 2011 SILC 2012 SILC 2013 (%)

Belgium 14.6 14.6 15.3 15.3 15.1

Men 13.4 13.9 14.6 14.7 14.6

Women 15.7 15.2 16.0 15.9 15.5

Since poverty consists of more than solely a lack of financial resources, the at- risk-of-poverty and social exclusion-indicator (AROPE) gives us an insight in the broader situation as it combines several dimensions of poverty: financial poverty, material deprivation, and the situation on the labor market.³ The lack of financial resources resulting in poverty has been mentioned before (Table 1). Material deprivation is described in Table 2.

Table 2. Severe material deprivation (Belgium, SILC 2009–2013)

Belgium 5.2 5.9 5.7 6.3 5.1

Men 4.9 5.7 5.9 6.3 5.5

Women 5.5 6.0 5.4 6.3 4.7

2 All statistics for Belgium concerning EU-SILC come from the official Belgium federal statistical service (ADSEI) based on the EUROSTAT database. See http://statbel.fgov.be/nl/modules/

publications/statistiques/arbeidsmarkt_levensomstandigheden/sILC_-_indicatoren_2004_-_2013.jsp.

3 This indicator corresponds to the sum of persons who are: at risk of poverty or severely materially deprived, or living in households with very low work intensity. Persons are only counted once even if they are present in several sub-indicators. At risk-of-poverty are persons with an equivalized disposable income below the risk-of-poverty threshold, which is set at 60% of the national median equivalized disposable income (after social transfers). Material deprivation covers indicators relating to economic strain and durables. Severely materially deprived persons have living conditions severely constrained by a lack of resources, they experience at least 4 out of 9 following deprivations items:

they cannot afford (1) to pay rent or utility bills, (2) keep home adequately warm, (3) face unexpect- ed expenses, (4) eat meat, fish or a protein equivalent every second day, (5) a week holiday away from home, (6) a car, (7) a washing machine, (8) a color TV, or (9) a telephone. People living in households with very low work intensity are those aged 0–59 living in households where the adults (aged 18–59) work less than 20% of their total work potential during the past year (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/

tgm/web/table/description.jsp).

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The third indicator refers to the situation of Belgian citizens on the labor market, and more specifically to a very low work intensity, as shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Very low work intensity (Belgium, SILC 2009–2013)

Belgium 12.3 12.7 13.8 13.9 14.0

Men 11.1 11.9 13.2 13.4 14.0

Women 13.6 13.5 14.4 14.3 14.0

AROPE combines the above-mentioned indicators (see Table 4). The 20.8% is below the European mean of 24.5% and, compared to the 28 countries in the EUROSTAT database puts Belgium on the 17th place.

Table 4. At-risk-of-poverty and social exclusion-indicator—AROPE (Belgium, SILC 2009–2013) SILC 2009 SILC 2010 SILC 2011 SILC 2012 SILC 2013

(%)

Belgium 20.2 20.8 21.0 21.6 20.8

Men 18.5 20.0 20.4 20.9 20.4

Women 21.8 21.7 21.5 22.3 21.2

Over the last five years, the evolution in combating poverty is rather limited and not statistically significant. However, as it is pointed out in the latest official Belgian National Social Report (2014), “behind the global stability, a number of di- vergent trends are found.”

Between 2005 and 2010 (EU-SILC 2006–2011), the poverty risk decreased for elderly people, while it increased for children. Specific challenges are: (1) the growing number of people living in low work intensity households and the increasing poverty risk of this category (this finding implies a double challenge: access to the labor market and adequacy of the social protection benefits); (2) the very high poverty risk of single parent families and non-EU citizens; (3) the increase of the poverty risk among children; (4) the coincidence between low income situations and high housing expenses (National Social Report 2014).

The most recent census (EU SILC 2013) illustrates this very clearly for the at-risk- of-poverty indicator (AROP), showing greater risks for specific groups, see Table 5.

The Belgian overall at-risk-of-poverty indicator (AROP) is currently 15.1%.

When asked to the citizens in question, people judge their situation even worse:

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20.9% of the Belgian population indicates difficulties or great difficulties in making the ends meet on an everyday basis (EU SILC 2013).

To the above-mentioned characteristics of poverty and social inclusion in Bel- gium, we may also add the strong regional differences. The AROPE-indicator for the year 2011, the last year at our disposal, for instance, shows 40.4% for the Brus- sels Region, 15% for the Flemish Region, and 25.4% for the Walloon Region, leading to an average for Belgium of 20.8%.

Table 5. At-risk-of-poverty (Belgium, SILC 2013)

Specific groups (%)

Belgium overall 15.1

Age group 0–15 years old 16.8

Age group 16–25 years old 17.0

Age group over 65 years old 18.4

Very low work intensity (household with no-one working

without dependent children) 50.2

Very low work intensity (household with no-one working and

with dependent children) 71.0

Single persons 24.5

Single parents 34.2

Tenants 34.6

People not born in the EU-28 nor Belgium 45.5

People born outside Belgium 33.9

Apart from the subjective and relative (financial) poverty and social exclusion rates, it is important to look at possible inequalities. For that purpose, the Gini coefficient gives an indication. The Gini coefficient for Belgium is rather stable and beneath the European (EU-28) average of 30.5% (EU SILC 2013) (Table 6).

Table 6. Gini-coefficient (Belgium, SILC 2009–2013)

Belgium 26.4 26.6 26.3 26.5 25.9

In the light of the European EU 2020 Strategy, Belgium has set itself a goal to reduce the number of people at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion by 380,000 persons in 2020. In absolute numbers, this would mean that the amount of people liv-

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ing in poverty is reduced from 2,194,000 in 2010 (according to EU SILC 2010) to 1,814,000 persons in 2020. In reality, and up till now, the contrary is true: in 2014, 2,356,000 persons lived beneath the poverty threshold (National Reform Pro- gram 2014).

Based on these facts and figures, we can only conclude that poverty and social exclusion is a reality for an important part of the Belgian population, although it is one of the richest countries in Europe (Human Development Index 2014).

From an optimistic point of view, we may conclude that it does not get significantly worse, as indicators show that the amount of people in poverty remains rather stable (with sometimes a slight reduction). However, the fact that in everyday life, a growing number of people experience difficulties to make ends meet shows that anti-poverty policies and strategies in Belgium are not effective. A glimpse of this reality can be derived from administrative data: the number of people depending on minimum income schemes is growing, more people suffer from energy cuts due to unpaid bills, the number of indebted people is rising, and even charity organizations report a growing number of people asking for material help, including food (see Dierckx, Coene, and Raeymaeckers 2014).

Welfare State Arrangements to Combat Poverty and Social Exclusion

Throughout historical developments, the Belgian approach to address poverty and social exclusion evolved in the twentieth century from a mostly charity-based system at the beginning of this century, to a rights-based approach in the 1960s and 1970s (Maeseele 2012). In parallel with many European welfare states, after the Second World War the Belgian state conceptualized and implemented social rights (including issues such as social security, income maintenance, housing, health care, and education) as a framework by which the state is challenged to deal with problems of poverty and social exclusion (see for example Dean 2010; Lister 2004). In Belgium, social rights are specified and entrenched in the Constitution (Art. 23) since 1994, and the local Public Social Welfare Centers (PSCW) are active in every municipality and legally responsible to guarantee the right to social welfare for every citizen in order to make it possible for him or her to live a life in human dignity.

The structural approach is embedded in the Belgian social protection system, which consists of two parts: (1) social security and (2) social assistance. The social security system contains seven sectors: (a) old-age and survivor’s pensions; (b) un- employment benefits; (c) insurance for accidents at work; (d) insurance for occu- pational diseases; (e) family allowances; (f) compulsory insurance for medical care and benefits; (g) annual vacation. The social assistance system contains the ‘resid- uary systems’: integration income (and social assistance in the broad sense); in-

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come guarantee for the elderly; guaranteed family benefits and benefits for dis- abled persons. In practice, three ways of intervening in terms of providing benefits can be distinguished: (a) in case of wage loss (unemployment, retirement, incapac- ity for work), one will obtain a substitution income; (b) if one is to bear specific so- cial charges, such as raising children or sickness costs, one will receive an income supplement; and (c) if independent of one’s own will, or in case someone does not have a professional income, he or she will receive an assistance allowance (such as an integration income).

Typical for the Belgian system is the way solidarity is made concrete: working people pay social security contributions based on their salary. In that sense, the social security system is largely financed by the community, that is, all the citizens as a collective; and the trade unions, the health insurance funds (or ‘mutual insurance funds’) and the employers’ organizations co-decide about various aspects of the system. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the benefits and allowances are beneath the EU 60% median threshold, the Belgian social protection system turns out to be quite effective: without all social transfers the at-risk-of-poverty rate would amount to 42% (EU SILC 2013) compared to 15.1% after all social transfers. The integration income, for instance, mounts up to 75% for a single person or even 64% for a couple with two children.

However, the fact remains that a larger group of the population is at risk of ending up in poverty. In order to address this, social policy strategies are developed at all political levels. The Belgian state considers an active commitment of social policy on all these levels as essential, due to the multi-faceted nature of poverty and social exclusion, each within the constraints of their mandate and competences. A critical success factor, however, is the way these strategies and actions are integrated and/or mutually reinforcing. In Belgium, a lot of energy is put into the coordination of the different policies. A good example is the Combat Poverty, In- security and Social Exclusion Service set up by a “Cooperation Agreement between the Federal State, the Communities, and the Regions concerning the continuation of the Poverty Reduction Policy” in 1998. This Service has the following tasks:

− to draw up the state of affairs;

− to systematize and analyze information about insecurity, poverty, social exclusion, and access to rights on the basis of established indicators;

− to make concrete recommendations and proposals in order to improve policy and schemes for the prevention of insecurity, for the fight against poverty, and for the integration of people into society;

− to prepare a report at least every two years;

− to issue at the request of one of the signatory parties, the Interministerial Con- ference “Integration in Society,” or on its own initiative, recommendations, or to prepare interim reports on any issue that is related to an area that belongs to its tasks;

− to organize a structural dialogue with people in poverty.

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Unique is its composition based on representatives of the different governments, people experiencing poverty, the academic world, and trade unions.

Co-operation between different social policy levels is also established through the elaboration of common action plans. Complementary to the common action and reporting in the context of the European 2020 Strategy, for example, a Feder- al plan to combat poverty, containing a “Poverty Barometer,” has been put in place.

This Poverty Barometer has the ambition to follow up indicators relating to poverty and social exclusion and to develop 118 actions aimed at reaching the target of helping 380 thousand persons out of poverty by the year 2020. This plan is com- plemented by Regional action plans that are linked to the specific competences of the Regions and Communities. Up till now, however, these plans are merely a step- pingstone to put together the efforts realized by each government. The ambition to evolve towards an integrated plan is often constrained by the complex discussion on the mandates and competences allocated to different policy levels. Each policy level has its own mandate and competences, and consequently the responsibilities are often divided among different policy levels, which complicates an integrated approach.

On top of organizational and institutional complexities, Belgian anti-poverty strategies also have their own historical and actual accents. In the following sec- tions, we attempt to address and analyze the underlying original rationales and current interpretations of two topical spearheads of Belgian anti-poverty policy:

user participation and child poverty. These policies cannot be isolated from the overall efforts of Belgium in the light of the European Europe 2020 Strategy.

Discussing Topical Spearheads of Anti-Poverty Policy in Belgium

In what follows, we explain and discuss two spearheads of Belgian anti-poverty policy, and more specifically for the Flemish part, user participation and child poverty.

User Participation

In parallel with international developments (Cancian and Danziger 2009), Bel- gian conceptualizations of poverty and anti-poverty policy-making have shifted and changed, and have informed assumptions about user participation of people in poverty. Vranken (1998) describes this conceptual shift in anti-poverty politics.

During the ‘golden sixties’ and the seventies, social policy ‘rediscovered’ poverty owing to “a broad critique on welfare politics since the Belgian welfare state was

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conceived and implemented, such as negative consequences of economic growth, dehumanizing and alienating effects of production measures, and increasingly uni-dimensional patterns of consumption” (Vranken 1998, 64). After this ‘redis- covery’ followed a ‘redefinition’: from the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s the focus shifted to non-materialistic and cultural aspects, rather than stressing the lack of material and social resources, and “this shift took place because of the be- lief that material poverty was eradicated” (Vranken 1998, 67). Along with this shift in perception, people in poverty were mobilized as social actors “through social movements, such as ATD Fourth World, who asserted the claim to giving voice to the real interests and concerns of poor people” (Vranken 1998, 68). A significant milestone was the appearance of the General Report on Poverty (AVA) in 1994.

This symbolic report was composed to condemn the violation of the citizenship of people in poverty, and was presented as a joint venture by social workers and other actors, particularly (self-)advocacy organizations, aiming at guaranteeing the recognition of the standpoints of people in poverty in a structural dialogue with rep- resentative policymakers in the Belgian welfare state. As the Prime Minister of the day Jean-Luc Dehaene stated, “in the future, the government will take the conclusions and the suggestions in the general report as a point of departure for anti-poverty policy making” (AVA 1994, 416). As a consequence of these developments, the coordination of the AVA as a policy instrument became an annual Belgian en- terprise, resulting in the Cooperation Agreement between the Federal State, the Communities, and the Regions concerning the continuation of the Poverty Re- duction Policy in 1998 (cf. AVA 1994, 416), according to which the Combat Pov- erty, Insecurity and Social Exclusion Service was conceived and given a mandate to make up a bi-annual report about the state of the art of poverty issues in Belgium.

As such, user participation has come to function as a central and dominant social policy concept for the implementation of anti-poverty strategies in Belgium (Bouverne-De Bie 2003). This emphasis on the user participation of people in poverty is in line with international developments, where practitioners of social policy have shown an interest in putting people with experience of poverty into participatory positions in order to implement anti-poverty policies and to pursue a more democratic society (Beresford 2002, 2010; Lister 2002, 2004; Krumer-Nevo 2005, 2008). Since the 1990s, the formal participation of people with experience of poverty in policy-making has figured prominently on the international agenda as “they have the capacity to place, and indeed sometimes to force, life knowledge on the political, professional, academic and policy making agenda” (Beresford 2000, 493).

In what follows, we focus on the way in which this rhetoric of user participation has been implemented in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium). Interesting- ly, the appearance of the AVA also resulted in a Flemish Decree on Poverty Policy in 2003, stipulating the recognition of the ‘Network against Poverty’ and an advanced educational program for people in poverty, ‘The Link’ (see Degrande 2003). The recognition of this formal ‘Network against Poverty’ implies that the self-advocacy

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movement of people in poverty and their allies, advocating for their welfare rights, was constituted and subsidized by the Flemish Government (Van Robaeys et al.

2005). Recognizing and subsidizing ‘The Link’ implied that people in poverty were trained during an advanced educational program as ‘experts by experience’ to trans- form their experience of living in poverty into expertise (Walschap 2001; Spiess- chaert 2005; Casman et al. 2010). In the drive to become more responsive to the needs of disadvantaged users, trained experts by experience in poverty were accordingly employed in public service delivery to monitor anti-poverty policies and to empower the recipients of social policy. The surplus value of the active participation by the poor in public service delivery was emphasized because of the assumption that poverty issues at play in public services was in tension with the ‘hard-to-understand’ culture of poverty, characterized as a psychology of powerlessness (Nicaise and Dewilde 1995). This assumption is defined as ‘the missing link’:

The idea of an expert by experience in social exclusion is a response to […]

a missing link between the policy makers and aid providers of all the services with which the socially excluded come into contact, on the one hand, and the excluded persons themselves, on the other hand. […] The key element consists of the fundamental difference between the position of an excluded person, who is forced to live in long-term exclusion and that of the organisations and partici- pants in policy making, who are not familiar with this social experience nor with the harsh reality of the life of socially excluded people in all its aspects, particularly the sense of shame and humiliation due to the fact that they have no control over their own lives. (The Missing Link Europe 2011)

In Flanders, anti-poverty policy-making has thus been predominantly based on the principle of empowering people with experience of poverty to support their user participation in processes of policy-making (Dierckx 2007). The ‘gap’ between the poor and the non-poor is emphasized as an essential cultural dimension of poverty, and anti-poverty policy-making is pursued through individual empowerment as the building block enabling user participation:

We cannot forget that the accumulation of social inequality and exclusion makes up the individuality of poverty. The dimension of the depth of this gap is of crucial importance: how deep is the gap between the poor and the rest of society?

[…] The powerlessness of the poor is crucial: they cannot bridge the gap that sep- arates them from the rest of society under their own power; they need help to do this. And that is exactly the role of government intervention and the welfare sector. (Vranken 2007, 37)

In this dominant Flemish approach, explicit government intervention is meant to bridge the cultural gap created by a vicious circle of processes of social exclusion resulting in individual feelings of powerlessness, apathy, isolation, and shame (Van

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Regenmortel 2002). This ‘psychology of powerlessness’ has been the rationale behind a paradigm of individual empowerment “to improve the participation of people in poverty” as the dominant approach underlying anti-poverty policy-making (Van Regenmortel 2002, 75). According to this approach, participation “is viewed as a process: the mechanism by which people gain mastery over their lives” (Van Regenmortel 2002, 75).

That being the case, Flemish social policy concerned with anti-poverty policy-making is formally preoccupied with a discourse about empowering people in poverty so that they can engage in self-advocacy and user participation as the dominant way to implement anti-poverty strategies (Dierckx 2007). Also in international debates, proponents of psychosocial approaches argue for a psychosocial dimension in welfare politics (see Froggett 2002). In Flemish anti-poverty policy this psychosocial dimension is understood as the stimulation of an individual process of personal growth and adaptation of poor and socially excluded people. This is, for example, significantly manifested in a recent National Action Plan: Social In- clusion (POD MI 2008–2010, 4–5) of the Belgian welfare state, wherein the follow- ing definition has been formally adopted:

Social exclusion refers to a process through which poor citizens do not (any longer) manage to find connection with the rest of society. In one or more areas of life, a line of social fracture exists because poor people do not achieve the generally accepted standard of living. Poverty is the result of this process, as a system of social exclusion in which certain conditions reinforce each other, such as poor education, employment, and income; and poor people cannot bridge this gap under their own power.

Although this approach combines aspects of both a cultural and a materialist (or economic) definition of poverty, it places the material redistribution of resources and power in danger of being overlooked (see Veit-Wilson 2000; Lister 2004). The element of ‘a generally accepted standard of living’ refers to the material dimension, but the conceptualization of poverty as ‘a generally accepted standard of living that poor people do not achieve’ owing to a ‘gap that poor people cannot bridge under their own power’ adds a specific psychosocial dimension to anti-poverty policy-making and public welfare. As such, anti-poverty policy-making is translated as an empowerment strategy to induce a process of poor people’s personal growth in order to adapt to this generally accepted standard of living in our society.

We argue, however, that there is a risk involved in emphasizing this specific psychosocial dimension (Fraser 1995). In this approach, recognition is easily framed as a matter of self-realization: rather than being treated as an issue of social justice, the poverty problem is conceived as a result of a misrecognition of poor people’s perspectives. This approach, however, being “identified with inter- nal distortions in the structure of self-consciousness of the oppressed, […] is but

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a short step to blaming the victim” (Fraser 1996, 28). This particular interpreta- tion of a politics of cultural recognition can have disempowering and counterpro- ductive effects (Pease 2002), because social policy is “seeking to construct citizens committed to a personal identity” (Baistow 2000, 98). In this frame of reference, anti-poverty policy is committed to an identity politics that works in a paradoxical way: “the logic of individual empowerment operates in the name of making the social change on their own, in the name of making themselves free” (Baistow 2000).

As Phillips (2004, 36–37) argues:

Identity politics threaten to reinforce the very patterns of domination they oth- erwise claim to challenge, for in ignoring or promising to transcend differences […]; they treat difference as a problem—and those marked by them as a problem too. […] In doing so, they leave the agenda to be set by people whose power has been so much taken for granted that they do not even think of themselves as a distinct social group.

In these social policies, the cause of the poverty problem is mainly rooted in the personal sense of empowerment of people in poverty as a minority group, yet people who have the power to realize social change and can decide about issues of redistribution of resources and power remain unaddressed.

Child Poverty

Across Europe, social policymakers have adopted an explicit focus on combating child poverty since 2000 (European Commission 2008). Whereas child poverty has, for centuries, been a stubborn problem in most European societies (Platt 2005), it has only recently become one of the highest priorities of anti-poverty strategies. The European Council of March 2006, for example, explicitly considers children as a priority target group for anti-poverty policy and urges the Eu- ropean member states to take action in reducing child poverty. “The European Council asks the Member States to take necessary measures to rapidly and significantly reduce child poverty, giving all children equal opportunities, regardless of their social background” (Council of the European Union 2006, 24). In line with the European political attention to combat child poverty, and particularly in response to the EU2020 Strategy, child poverty has become an important topic in many national action plans. In Belgium, a national action plan to fight child poverty is developed in collaboration with all the governments on all political levels.

This national action plan is constructed around four goals, which are seen as being important to reinforce the well-being of children: (1) access to sufficient means;

(2) access to qualitative services; (3) participation of children; and (4) horizontal and vertical integration between all policy domains and policy levels. The nation-

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al action plan consists of 140 concrete actions. The target is currently derived from the overall EU2020 Strategy, which means that by 2020 82,000 children should be pulled out of poverty and social exclusion.

A fundamental reduction of poverty and of child poverty in particular, is also a top priority of the Flemish government, which wants to focus on an innovative, sustainable and solidary society. In Pact 2020, together with a diversity of social partners and civil society organizations, the Flemish government is setting out the concrete objectives for the program ‘Flanders In Action’: “In 2020 there’s a significant result of the intensive poverty reduction and social exclusion on several fronts.

[…] Those efforts result, among others, in halving the amount of children that are born in poverty and in a decrease of the poverty-risk in Flanders with 30%.” The Flemish government focuses in particular on children between 0 and 3 years, which gave rise for example to the following initiatives taken by the Flemish Government:

− the organization of a European Conference on Child Poverty (2010);

− the organization of an innovative Studio Kinderarmoede (Studio Child Pover- ty) with international and national experts, where it was concluded that it is time to make Flanders a region of excellence (Studio Kinderarmoede 2012);

− the development of a Society Case during 2012–2013 (Vandenbroeck 2013) following the focus on the creation of an innovative, sustainable and solidary society;

− the setting up a Child Poverty Fund during 2013–2014, funded by different social actors such as business companies and others;

− the funding of local networks of child and family services from 2014–2019 to combat child poverty in local municipalities and communities where a severe child poverty rate is documented.

In framing child poverty as a problem that needs urgent action, the child along with the parents, who are perceived as being responsible for realizing the well-being of children, have become the central objects of social policy intervention. This is, for example, reflected in the emphasis of policy makers in Flanders—in parallel with many European countries—on early childhood provisions and parent support strategies.

Early Childhood Provisions

Anti-poverty strategies have, for instance, been increasingly directed towards prevention as embodied by early childhood education and care (ECEC). A growing body of policy documents emphasizes the potential of early childhood provisions in order to equalize opportunities, prevent future problems in children and consequently break the cycle of poverty (European Commission 2011; OECD 2012b).

The proclaimed success of ECEC programs has been particularly sustained by international studies in the fields of developmental neuroscience and economy. Re- search findings suggest that the earlier the young brain is exposed to a wide varie-

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ty of stimuli, the more promising the child’s outcomes will be in terms of cognitive development, social-emotional functioning, and educational performances (Heck- man 2006). Although ECEC is generally considered beneficial for all young children, the highest ‘return on investment’ (Heckman 2006) is expected with children from low socio-economic backgrounds (Barnett 2005; Doyle et al. 2009). For those children identified as (at risk of) being socially and emotionally disadvantaged, early childhood provisions are even believed to outweigh the unequal distribution of opportunities (Burger 2010; Cleveland and Krashinsky 2003). The European Com- mission (2011, 4), for example, champions ECEC as a prominent and cost-efficient actor in breaking “the cycle of low achievement and disengagement that often leads to school drop-out and so to the transmission of poverty from one generation to the next.” Early childhood provisions are thus represented as an important lever in order to achieve two of the core aims of the Europe 2020 Strategy: reducing early school leaving (to below 10%) and lifting at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty and social exclusion (European Council 2010). Within this framework, national action plans are increasingly concerned with the accessibility of early childhood provisions, especially targeted at children from ethnic minority and low-income families.

Nevertheless, a strong plea for caution can also be made about policies that consider ECEC to be the ‘magic bullet’ in the fight against poverty (Morabito, Vandenbroeck, and Roose 2013). Several researchers voice their concerns regard- ing the overall and historical tendency of framing poverty as a mere educational problem. The assumption that early childhood provisions can diminish social inequalities is thereby not only empirically challenged, but it has also been contest- ed because of the underlying rationale that future outcomes in education and later life are moulded primarily by personal efforts and talents (Morabito, Vandenbro- eck, and Roose, 2013). According to this dominant logic, educational failure, poor employment prospects and adult poverty eventually tend to be considered as the result of the individual child’s and its parents’ merits (Ivan and Cristei 2011) rather than by structural inequalities. Nevertheless, the well-being of children in West- ern societies is predominantly affected by the socio-economic background of the households in which children are born, since they are economically completely dependent upon the economic unit of the household in which they live (Lister 2007).

Rather than protecting children as victims of poor parents, this demands that children’s rights are linked to the rights of their parents. Therefore, combating child poverty requires a focus on the position of families with children in poverty and available services and resources for the family. In the existent body of research, for example, there is compelling evidence that services for poor families with chil- dren can mediate these negative outcomes in situations of poverty and social exclu- sion, but only when they offer high quality to all parents as well as children, includ- ing families living in poverty (Melhuish et al. 2006; UNICEF 2008). Moreover, also structural dimensions of poverty should be tackled by providing enough resources (including financial and material resources) for the family.

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Parent Support Strategies

Correspondingly, the importance of parent support strategies is stressed in the fight against child poverty. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop- ment report prescribes, for example, “parental engagement—especially in ensuring high-quality children’s learning at home and in communicating with ECEC staff—

is strongly associated with children’s later academic success, high school comple- tion, socio-emotional development and adaptation in society” (OECD 2012a, 12).

The reasoning is that early childhood provisions can help those parents in socially disadvantaged situations to support their child’s development. Accordingly, ‘good’

parenting is considered the prime vehicle of a child’s social mobility. In order to avoid and surmount a downward spiral, policy and practice have been advocating therapeutic ‘guidance’ around parenting styles, driven by a scientific regime of truth about risk factors (Clarke 2006). As Popkewitz (2003, 53) argues, parents are considered as key figures in order to, for example, produce social progress through creating better readers, more positive attitudes about school, improved attendance and better homework habits. Research also demonstrates that this development has

“led to measurements of family life being scored around various categories, including frequency of swearing or smacking” (McLaughlin 2008, 140), “chat time during meals” (Swick 2009, 329), “reading books, structured play, breast feeding, clean- er homes, better safety, attendance at nursery and maternal employment” (Clarke 2006, 718); yet, broader material components and processes in society that produce poverty and social inequalities are often overlooked (Axford 2010).

While analyzing this dominant discourse, it can be argued that there seems to be a social policy engagement with the reinforcement of parental responsibilities rather than with structural inequalities which require the responsibility of the welfare state in redistributing resources and power (Clarke 2006; Fraser 1995). Sever- al authors contest the idea that ‘good parenting’ can produce desirable outcomes in the child’s development, and particularly of children growing up in poverty (Gillies 2008). In this respect, poverty is framed as a mere cultural phenomenon being ad- dressed by changing the norms of parenting in poor families rather than combating poverty itself (Clarke 2006). An interesting example is the fact that the Positive Par- enting Program (Triple P) is classified in international rankings such as the Europe- an Platform for Investing in Children (europa.eu/epic) as ‘best practice’ in tackling child poverty, whereas for instance The Working Families Tax Credit (Income support for working poor) is only codified as ‘emergent practice’. The Triple P program, which has also been implemented in Flanders, is, however, analyzed as primarily

“based on the assumptions that parents should be ‘taught’ what positive parenting is; that parents do not know how to perform positive parenting, while the expert does; and that parents can ‘progress’ when looking critically at themselves and con- fessing to the professional” (Vandenbroeck, Roose, and De Bie 2011, 77). While the program does recognize that “the broader ecological context within which a fam-