Wim Van Lancker
Biographic Data
| ID | 255362 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wim Van Lancker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wim |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Lancker |
| SIGNATURE | VAN LANCKER W |
| AFFILIATIONS | KU Leuven |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4071-5329 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 505 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
There Is Cumulative Status Bias and Status Entrenchment in NBA Awards: Comment on McMahan and Shor (2024)
Peter McMahan and Eran Shor (MS) published an article in Sociological Science critiquing our study on cumulative status bias in NBA All-Star elections (Biegert, Kühhirt, and Van Lancker 2023). In this article, we affirm the presence of cumulative status bias in NBA Awards. Crucially, MS focus only on the accumulated component of cumulative status bias, ignoring the impact of immediately preceding status signals, which decouple quality and status.…
Equal Social Participation for All? Measuring the Adequacy of Cash Support for Children with Disabilities in Belgium
Previous research has shown that childhood disability incurs higher costs. Welfare state cash support is crucial to guarantee adequate social participation for families of children with disabilities. To properly assess the adequacy of cash support, the needs-based costs of childhood disability must be accounted for. This article investigates the adequacy of a cash support system that is designed to increase with the severity of the child’s care n…
Household classification, family diversity and poverty risks in Europe: Addressing a North-Western bias
European statistics and policies commonly rely on household typologies that classify households based on the number of adults and children living together. However, these typologies overlook family relationships and classify any non-standard arrangement into a broad residual category of ‘other’. This approach fails to capture increasing family diversity across Europe and introduces a persistent North-Western bias into data and policymaking. As a …
Algorithmic Decision‐Making and Harmonization in Multi‐Level Governance Welfare Practices: Empirical Evidence From Belgium
Algorithmic decision‐making (ADM) is increasingly used by public organizations to allocate social benefits. However, it remains unclear whether ADM leads to more harmonized decisions, especially in multi‐level governance contexts like Belgium. Therefore, we ask whether, and to what extent, ADM is linked to the harmonization of welfare decisions across local social agencies. More specifically, we analyze decisions related to additional financial s…
The families in households typology: Searching for families in social surveys
sponsorship: This work was supported by HORIZON EUROPE European Research Council [Grant Number 101060410]; Innovate UK. (HORIZON EUROPE European Research Council|101060410, Innovate UK, Horizon Europe - Pillar II|101060410)
Contextualising Income-Based Poverty Measurement: The Needs-Based Cost of Childhood Disability in Belgium
Shedding light on the hidden welfare state of private pensions: Examining the size and distributional effects of social tax expenditures for second pillar employee pensions in Belgium
In contemporary European welfare states, little attention is being paid to the ‘hidden welfare state’ of social tax expenditures (STEs) for private pensions. This lack of attention is surprising since the growing use of private pensions, like that of statutory pensions, has important implications for the public budget. The reason is that private pensions tend to benefit from reliefs in income taxes and social security contributions, which leads t…
Policy feedback and income targeting in the welfare state
In light of ongoing debates about income targeting in the welfare state, this article explores how the design and outcomes of income targeting policies are related to popular targeting preferences. Based on the unique combination of fine-grained opinion and policy indicators in a multilevel analysis, the results show that targeting preferences are indeed empirically related to targeting policies. However, whether these preferences are affected mo…
The family as provider of intergenerational support during Covid-19: A study into the mental health consequences for 65+ Europeans
Introduction: Intergenerational support is an important determinant of mental health. Due to limited access to formal care, the role of the family as provider of support became more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, it remains unclear how intergenerational support from adult children to older parents was affected during the pandemic and whether this had consequences for the mental health of the parent generation. Methods: Using dat…
How much does immigration contribute to national poverty rates? A decomposition analysis for 17 European welfare states
Over the past decades, many European welfare states failed to reduce poverty. We examine two coinciding trends: the inability to lower poverty rates, and the growth of immigrant populations. Immigrants have become the main contributor to population growth in Europe and have higher poverty risks than natives. This contribution quantifies to what extent national poverty rates were driven by population change. We present a Kitagawa–Blinder–Oaxaca de…
Revisiting the role of social work in the substantial realization of social rights in local welfare systems: Transforming and changing the rules of the institutional game
Although diverse European welfare states have institutionalized an extensive infrastructure of public welfare services to redistribute resources, governments have been confronted with barriers in realizing the social rights of certain groups of citizens. Decentralization and increasingly local welfare provision has been promoted as a strategy to substantially realize social rights. In that sense, the vital role of frontline social work has been s…
Labour supply reactions to basic income: Insights from 60 years of research
Basic income (BI) has lately re-emerged as a topic of debate, without having lost its explosiveness and contentiousness. Of particular interest in this debate is the labour supply effect of a BI, which holds significant implications for its societal desirability, economic sustainability and political feasibility. To shed light on this issue and facilitate more informed policy discussions, this article delves into six decades of research, encompas…
Including the Most Excluded? A Qualitative Study on the Address Registration for People Experiencing Homelessness in Belgium
In many European countries, one needs a permanent address to be entitled to social rights. To address this minimum prerequisite, mechanisms for administrative inclusion are in place for persons experiencing homelessness, such as the reference address in Belgium. This paper disentangles the non-take-up mechanisms behind this reference address by drawing on interviews with professionals. Our evidence suggests this is a minimum minimorum of social p…
Understanding the immigrant-native gap in childcare use: An empirical exploration for 21 European countries
In this contribution, we examine whether and why there is a gap in the use of formal childcare services between immigrant and native families across 21 European countries. We focus on three sets of potential determinants: (1) social class, education and labour market position; (2) immigrant-specific factors such as norms in the region of origin, citizenship acquisition and length of stay in the country of residence; and (3) contextual factors suc…
They Can't All Be Stars: The Matthew Effect, Cumulative Status Bias, and Status Persistence in NBA All-Star Elections
This study investigates the extent to and mechanisms through which Matthew effects create persistent status hierarchies. We propose a model that highlights the role of cumulative status bias in the feedback loop that leads from initial status allocation to status confirmation. We investigate the formalized process of repeated status allocation in annual elections to the National Basketball Association (NBA) All-Star game. Using detailed records o…
Research Handbook on Leave Policy: Parenting and Social Inequalities in a Global Perspective
status: Published
Distance Learning and School-Related Stress Among Belgian Adolescents During the Covid-19 Pandemic
To improve our understanding of the mental health consequences of the shift to distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study examined which factors are associated with increased school-related stress in adolescents. The sample consists of 16,093 adolescents, aged 12 to 18, who were enrolled in secondary education in Flanders, Belgium in May 2020. Stepwise binomial logistic regressions were used to investigate associations between the…
Family policies’ long-term effects on poverty: A comparative analysis of single and partnered mothers
This study investigates whether generous family policies at the transition to parenthood reduce single and partnered mothers’ economic disadvantages later in the life course. Previous research usually focused on the immediate effects of family policies and disregards potential longer-term effects. In this study, we suggest taking a life-course perspective to study the relationships between family policy and mothers’ poverty risks. We empirically …
Researching the Non-Take up of Social Rights: A Social Work Perspective
In the face of growing social, economic, political and demographic challenges, many European welfare states have been confronted with barriers in realising the social rights of certain groups of citizens. This phenomenon has often been referred to as ‘the non-take up of social rights’. Considering the core mandate and key principles of social work as a practice-based profession and academic discipline, we argue that social work should have a key …
Making Parental Leave Policies Work for Single Mothers: Lessons from Europe
It is well documented that national parental leave policies encourage parents’ employment. Research on parental leave, though, has generally failed to draw lessons on how leave policy affects the employment and economic well-being of single parents. We examine the extent to which parental leave policies support the employment of single mothers with children under six years old across twenty-seven European countries, showing that single mothers ar…
Digital Cleavages and Risk in the Platform Economy in Belgium
The adoption of digital technologies challenge existing institutional approaches towards labour markets segmentation and dualisation by dissolving the employer-employee nexus. When national governments adapt to digitalisation by deregula-tion they risk to fostering "flexibility at the margin" which can reinforce digital cleavages at the intersection of tasks, skills and new technology. This is because deregulation threatens the existing country-b…
Measuring the Generosity of Parental Leave Policies
In order to investigate and compare welfare states or specific welfare programmes, scientists, opinion‐makers and politicians rely on indicators. As many of the concepts or objects studied are somewhat abstract, these indicators can often only be approximations. In comparative welfare‐state research, scholars have suggested several approximating indicators to quantitatively measure and compare the generosity of public welfare provision, with a sp…
What a social investment ‘litmus test’ must address: A response to Plavgo and Hemerijck
Throughout the past decade, the notion that social policy should be applied as a tool to enhance the productive capacity of families, rather than to smooth consumption, has gained considerable traction under the moniker of social investment (SI). Against lingering critiques of the usefulness of SI research, Plavgo and Hemerijck primarily present bivariate, cross-sectional correlations of national-level outcomes to provide what they call a ‘social…
The Relationship between Familizing and Individualizing Policies and Mental Health in Parents in Europe
Previous studies suggest the relative importance of the impact of childcare policies on mental health in parents. There have also been studies showing that welfare states have differing policy packages, consisting of a mixture of familizing and individualizing policy measures. This study builds on and extends this knowledge by carrying out a European comparison of the association between mental well health and family policies. We use Lohmann and …
The Palgrave Handbook of Family Policy
The Matthew effect in childcare use: A Matter of Policies or Preferences
Under the social investment paradigm, formal childcare services are heralded as being the policy instrument par excellence to combat social exclusion. However, it was shown that a Matthew effect (ME) in its use is present in almost all European countries: disadvantaged children are less likely to use childcare than more advantaged children. In this contribution we aim to uncover the cause of the ME by distinguishing between supply-side and demand…
Who benefits? The social distribution of subsidized childcare in Sweden and Flanders
The main goal of this article is to unravel the social distribution of childcare policies: Who benefits from government investment in public childcare? The analysis complements earlier research on the distribution of social policy outcomes and confronts the growing concern over selectivity. By nature, childcare services tend to be used mainly by people in work, i.e. those in higher income brackets. Concern therefore arises about the consequences …
Explaining patterns of inequality in childcare service use across 31 developed economies: A welfare state perspective
Childcare services are increasingly regarded a major policy lever to combat social inequalities in early life. Yet, it was shown that inequality in the use of childcare services is the norm rather than the exception in European and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. As a result, social inequalities between disadvantaged and advantaged children are likely to be reinforced instead of being narrowed. The aim of …
The unequal benefits of activation: An analysis of the social distribution of family policy among families with young children
In the last few decades, measures to reconcile work and family life have risen in mutual interaction with a rising rate of dual earnership. However, dual earnership has (to date) been adopted in a socially uneven way in most European societies. Therefore, one may wonder whether the activation measures have brought about a loss of vertical redistribution in welfare states. We address this question by focusing on the interaction of three measures o…
Three Shortcomings of the Social Investment Perspective
In this article we critically assess the social investment perspective that has become the dominant paradigm in European social policymaking. We identify and discuss some of its shortcomings that may hamper social progress for all. In doing so, we focus on three pillars central to the idea of social investment: social inclusion through work, individual responsibility and human capital investment. We find that the social investment perspective has…
Putting the Child-Centred Investment Strategy to the Test: Evidence for the EU27
Under the social investment paradigm, a child-centred investment strategy has been developed. The mainstay of such a strategy is the provision of childcare services, which are expected to increase maternal employment rates, further children's human capital and mitigate social inequalities in early life. In this article, I critically assess the child-centred investment strategy and question whether childcare services in European countries are, in …
Reducing Inequality in Childcare Service Use across European Countries: What (if any) Is the role of Social Spending
Childcare services are increasingly put forward as one of the most important policy levers to combat poverty and inequality. However, higher income families use childcare services to a much larger extent than lower income families. Almost all European countries increased expenditures on childcare over the past years, but has an ever‐increasing public spending on childcare provision led to more equality in its use? In this article, the relationshi…
The impact of child benefits on single mother poverty: Exploring the role of targeting in 15 E uropean countries
Single mothers are vulnerable to living in poverty. The question of how to safeguard the economic status of single mothers in a context of increasing dual earnership is a crucial one. In the present study we addressed this issue by investigating the impact of child benefits on the poverty risk of single mothers in 15 E uropean countries. We focused in particular on the design of child benefits and investigated whether targeting towards single mot…
Family policies’ long-term effects on poverty: A comparative analysis of single and partnered mothers
This study investigates whether generous family policies at the transition to parenthood reduce single and partnered mothers’ economic disadvantages later in the life course. Previous research usually focused on the immediate effects of family policies and disregards potential longer-term effects. In this study, we suggest taking a life-course perspective to study the relationships between family policy and mothers’ poverty risks. We empirically …
The European World of Temporary Employment
Departing from growing concerns about in-work poverty and the proliferation of flexible employment, we investigate the association between temporary employment and poverty in a European comparative perspective. In doing so, we focus specifically on possible gender dimensions, because some are concerned that the impact of flexible employment on income security will be different for men and women and that gender inequality will increase. By means o…
Universalism under siege? Exploring the association between targeting, child benefits and child poverty across 26 countries
An Intersectional Approach towards Parental Employment in Families with a Child with a Disability: The Case of Belgium
For parents with disabled children labour market participation is difficult since these children require care that exceeds typical parental care. At the same time, disabled children often live in families who belong to social categories that are associated with lower employment probabilities. However, the intersection between disability and social categories is hitherto overlooked in the literature. Drawing on a case study of Belgium, this articl…
What a social investment ‘litmus test’ must address: A response to Plavgo and Hemerijck
Throughout the past decade, the notion that social policy should be applied as a tool to enhance the productive capacity of families, rather than to smooth consumption, has gained considerable traction under the moniker of social investment (SI). Against lingering critiques of the usefulness of SI research, Plavgo and Hemerijck primarily present bivariate, cross-sectional correlations of national-level outcomes to provide what they call a ‘social…
Horizontal and Vertical Equity Objectives of Child Benefit Systems: An Empirical Assessment for European Countries
Understanding the immigrant-native gap in childcare use: An empirical exploration for 21 European countries
In this contribution, we examine whether and why there is a gap in the use of formal childcare services between immigrant and native families across 21 European countries. We focus on three sets of potential determinants: (1) social class, education and labour market position; (2) immigrant-specific factors such as norms in the region of origin, citizenship acquisition and length of stay in the country of residence; and (3) contextual factors suc…
The Measurement of Targeting Design in Complex Welfare States: A Proposal and Empirical Applications
Non‐take up of the supplemental child benefit for children with a disability in Belgium: A mixed‐method approach
Families with disabled children run a great risk of being poor. Although policies providing poor families with financial benefits should be effective in reducing poverty, the actual effectiveness is often jeopardized by the issue of non‐take up (NTU). Yet, NTU of benefits aimed at disabled children is for the most part uncharted territory. In this article, we fill this gap using a mixed‐methods approach to (a) estimate the magnitude and character…
Solidarity and Reciprocity in the Social Investment State: What Can be Learned from the Case of Flemish School Allowances and Truancy
In this article, we discuss some of the new tensions that are emerging between the different foundations of the welfare state. Several developments have led to the advent of the social investment state, in which people are being activated and empowered instead of passively protected. We argue that this social policy shift has been accompanied by a normative shift towards a more stringent interpretation of social protection in which individual res…
They Can't All Be Stars: The Matthew Effect, Cumulative Status Bias, and Status Persistence in NBA All-Star Elections
This study investigates the extent to and mechanisms through which Matthew effects create persistent status hierarchies. We propose a model that highlights the role of cumulative status bias in the feedback loop that leads from initial status allocation to status confirmation. We investigate the formalized process of repeated status allocation in annual elections to the National Basketball Association (NBA) All-Star game. Using detailed records o…
Researching the Non-Take up of Social Rights: A Social Work Perspective
In the face of growing social, economic, political and demographic challenges, many European welfare states have been confronted with barriers in realising the social rights of certain groups of citizens. This phenomenon has often been referred to as ‘the non-take up of social rights’. Considering the core mandate and key principles of social work as a practice-based profession and academic discipline, we argue that social work should have a key …
Measuring the Generosity of Parental Leave Policies
In order to investigate and compare welfare states or specific welfare programmes, scientists, opinion‐makers and politicians rely on indicators. As many of the concepts or objects studied are somewhat abstract, these indicators can often only be approximations. In comparative welfare‐state research, scholars have suggested several approximating indicators to quantitatively measure and compare the generosity of public welfare provision, with a sp…
Making Parental Leave Policies Work for Single Mothers: Lessons from Europe
It is well documented that national parental leave policies encourage parents’ employment. Research on parental leave, though, has generally failed to draw lessons on how leave policy affects the employment and economic well-being of single parents. We examine the extent to which parental leave policies support the employment of single mothers with children under six years old across twenty-seven European countries, showing that single mothers ar…
The Relationship between Familizing and Individualizing Policies and Mental Health in Parents in Europe
Previous studies suggest the relative importance of the impact of childcare policies on mental health in parents. There have also been studies showing that welfare states have differing policy packages, consisting of a mixture of familizing and individualizing policy measures. This study builds on and extends this knowledge by carrying out a European comparison of the association between mental well health and family policies. We use Lohmann and …
Algorithmic Decision‐Making and Harmonization in Multi‐Level Governance Welfare Practices: Empirical Evidence From Belgium
Algorithmic decision‐making (ADM) is increasingly used by public organizations to allocate social benefits. However, it remains unclear whether ADM leads to more harmonized decisions, especially in multi‐level governance contexts like Belgium. Therefore, we ask whether, and to what extent, ADM is linked to the harmonization of welfare decisions across local social agencies. More specifically, we analyze decisions related to additional financial s…
Contextualising Income-Based Poverty Measurement: The Needs-Based Cost of Childhood Disability in Belgium
A Universal Basic Pension for Europe's Elderly: Options and Pitfalls
In this article we explore the implementation of a European basic pension (BP) scheme as a means of combating financial poverty of Europe's elderly. As earlier contributions already outlined the practical and ethical arguments that favour a European basic income, we assume that a basic income is philosophically and ethically justified and that the European Union has a crucial role to play in its implementation. In this article, we broaden the sco…
De terugkeer van het mattheuseffect?: De casus van de kinderopvang in Vlaanderen
This research note investigates the presence of a so called Matthew effect in the use and distribution of childcare services in the Belgian region of Flanders. The analyses show that this is the case and that the use of childcare is unequally distributed among society. Low income families with children make only half as much use of childcare services than higher income families. Next to this, the distributional efforts of the government with rega…
The European World of Temporary Employment
Departing from growing concerns about in-work poverty and the proliferation of flexible employment, we investigate the association between temporary employment and poverty in a European comparative perspective. In doing so, we focus specifically on possible gender dimensions, because some are concerned that the impact of flexible employment on income security will be different for men and women and that gender inequality will increase. By means o…
The unequal benefits of activation: An analysis of the social distribution of family policy among families with young children
In the last few decades, measures to reconcile work and family life have risen in mutual interaction with a rising rate of dual earnership. However, dual earnership has (to date) been adopted in a socially uneven way in most European societies. Therefore, one may wonder whether the activation measures have brought about a loss of vertical redistribution in welfare states. We address this question by focusing on the interaction of three measures o…
Migration and Welfare in the New Europe: Social Protection and the Challenges of Integration - Edited by E. Carmel, A. Cerami and T. Papadopoulos
Who benefits? The social distribution of subsidized childcare in Sweden and Flanders
The main goal of this article is to unravel the social distribution of childcare policies: Who benefits from government investment in public childcare? The analysis complements earlier research on the distribution of social policy outcomes and confronts the growing concern over selectivity. By nature, childcare services tend to be used mainly by people in work, i.e. those in higher income brackets. Concern therefore arises about the consequences …
Solidarity and Reciprocity in the Social Investment State: What Can be Learned from the Case of Flemish School Allowances and Truancy
In this article, we discuss some of the new tensions that are emerging between the different foundations of the welfare state. Several developments have led to the advent of the social investment state, in which people are being activated and empowered instead of passively protected. We argue that this social policy shift has been accompanied by a normative shift towards a more stringent interpretation of social protection in which individual res…
Wie heeft profijt van het overheidsbeleid? - Kinderopvang in Zweden en België (Vlaanderen)
Who benefits from government investment in childcare? .The case of Sweden and Belgium (Flanders) Childcare is promoted at the national and European level as a policy instrument par excellence to simultaneously reconcile work and family duties and increase female employment rates. As a consequence, European governments increasingly deploy resources to subsidise childcare services. The main goal of this paper is to unravel who benefits from this go…
Three Shortcomings of the Social Investment Perspective
In this article we critically assess the social investment perspective that has become the dominant paradigm in European social policymaking. We identify and discuss some of its shortcomings that may hamper social progress for all. In doing so, we focus on three pillars central to the idea of social investment: social inclusion through work, individual responsibility and human capital investment. We find that the social investment perspective has…
Putting the Child-Centred Investment Strategy to the Test: Evidence for the EU27
Under the social investment paradigm, a child-centred investment strategy has been developed. The mainstay of such a strategy is the provision of childcare services, which are expected to increase maternal employment rates, further children's human capital and mitigate social inequalities in early life. In this article, I critically assess the child-centred investment strategy and question whether childcare services in European countries are, in …
Who Benefits from Investment Policies? The Case of Family Activation in European Countries
Family policy is a constituent part of the traditional social policy mix that has been subject to profound changes in terms of both scope and substance following the emergence of the social investment paradigm. Therefore, the shift from cash to service spending is further explored with a specific focus on family policy (i.e. child benefits, childcare services and parental leave benefits). Based on expenditure trends, little support is found for t…
The impact of child benefits on single mother poverty: Exploring the role of targeting in 15 E uropean countries
Single mothers are vulnerable to living in poverty. The question of how to safeguard the economic status of single mothers in a context of increasing dual earnership is a crucial one. In the present study we addressed this issue by investigating the impact of child benefits on the poverty risk of single mothers in 15 E uropean countries. We focused in particular on the design of child benefits and investigated whether targeting towards single mot…
Horizontal and Vertical Equity Objectives of Child Benefit Systems: An Empirical Assessment for European Countries
Universalism under siege? Exploring the association between targeting, child benefits and child poverty across 26 countries
Explaining patterns of inequality in childcare service use across 31 developed economies: A welfare state perspective
Childcare services are increasingly regarded a major policy lever to combat social inequalities in early life. Yet, it was shown that inequality in the use of childcare services is the norm rather than the exception in European and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. As a result, social inequalities between disadvantaged and advantaged children are likely to be reinforced instead of being narrowed. The aim of …
Reducing Inequality in Childcare Service Use across European Countries: What (if any) Is the role of Social Spending
Childcare services are increasingly put forward as one of the most important policy levers to combat poverty and inequality. However, higher income families use childcare services to a much larger extent than lower income families. Almost all European countries increased expenditures on childcare over the past years, but has an ever‐increasing public spending on childcare provision led to more equality in its use? In this article, the relationshi…
The Matthew effect in childcare use: A Matter of Policies or Preferences
Under the social investment paradigm, formal childcare services are heralded as being the policy instrument par excellence to combat social exclusion. However, it was shown that a Matthew effect (ME) in its use is present in almost all European countries: disadvantaged children are less likely to use childcare than more advantaged children. In this contribution we aim to uncover the cause of the ME by distinguishing between supply-side and demand…
Non‐take up of the supplemental child benefit for children with a disability in Belgium: A mixed‐method approach
Families with disabled children run a great risk of being poor. Although policies providing poor families with financial benefits should be effective in reducing poverty, the actual effectiveness is often jeopardized by the issue of non‐take up (NTU). Yet, NTU of benefits aimed at disabled children is for the most part uncharted territory. In this article, we fill this gap using a mixed‐methods approach to (a) estimate the magnitude and character…
The Measurement of Targeting Design in Complex Welfare States: A Proposal and Empirical Applications
The Matthew effect in childcare use: A matter of policies or preferences?
Under the social investment paradigm, formal childcare services are heralded as being the policy instrument par excellence to combat social exclusion. However, it was shown that a Matthew effect (ME) in its use is present in almost all European countries: disadvantaged children are less likely to use childcare than more advantaged children. In this contribution we aim to uncover the cause of the ME by distinguishing between supply-side and demand…
Covid-19, school closures, and child poverty: A social crisis in the making
While coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to spread across the globe, many countries have decided to close schools as part of a physical distancing policy to slow transmission and ease the burden on health systems. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization estimates that 138 countries have closed schools nationwide, and several other countries have implemented regional or local closures. These school closures are affectin…
The Palgrave Handbook of Family Policy
This OA handbook provides a multilevel view of family policy implications: supra-national orgs, national states, regional levels, and smaller employers.
An Intersectional Approach towards Parental Employment in Families with a Child with a Disability: The Case of Belgium
For parents with disabled children labour market participation is difficult since these children require care that exceeds typical parental care. At the same time, disabled children often live in families who belong to social categories that are associated with lower employment probabilities. However, the intersection between disability and social categories is hitherto overlooked in the literature. Drawing on a case study of Belgium, this articl…
Digital Cleavages and Risk in the Platform Economy in Belgium
The adoption of digital technologies challenge existing institutional approaches towards labour markets segmentation and dualisation by dissolving the employer-employee nexus. When national governments adapt to digitalisation by deregula-tion they risk to fostering "flexibility at the margin" which can reinforce digital cleavages at the intersection of tasks, skills and new technology. This is because deregulation threatens the existing country-b…
Measuring the Generosity of Parental Leave Policies
In order to investigate and compare welfare states or specific welfare programmes, scientists, opinion‐makers and politicians rely on indicators. As many of the concepts or objects studied are somewhat abstract, these indicators can often only be approximations. In comparative welfare‐state research, scholars have suggested several approximating indicators to quantitatively measure and compare the generosity of public welfare provision, with a sp…
Political science (36 works) · Economics (34 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (30 works) · Economic growth (22 works) · Public economics (20 works) · Welfare (17 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Demographic economics (14 works) · Labour economics (14 works) · Sociology (14 works)