Een nieuwe klasse-divisie in de welvaartsstaat?

Abstract

It is feared that growing numbers are unable to earn a decent living in increasingly skill-driven Western economies. International competition, technological change and deindustrialisation are thought to conspire against the low-skilled. The alleged growth in labour market inequalities is seen to pose a fundamental threat to social cohesion and the sustainability of the social contract. We test, using household survey data for Belgium, the hypothesis that increasing numbers are becoming unable to secure a decent standard of living in the labour market and that chronic dependence on redistribution is on the increase. The exploratory bivariate and causal multivariate analysis does suggest an economic polarisation on the educational dimension. Poverty and pretransfer-poverty in particular became increasingly concentrated among the low- skilled in the period 1985-1992. This result remains very much of a preliminary nature, given the relatively short time period for which data is available. However, our findings are not inconsistent with the fear that need at working age is becoming of a more structural nature.