SHARE Belgium

This research institute has been studying social inequality and wealth distribution in the welfare state for over 30 years. The research is empirical and multidisciplinary in nature, and is based largely on survey data. Herman Deleeck, who founded the Centre in 1972, fulfilled a pioneering role in developing social indicators for Flanders and Belgium. The Centre’s research activities belong to the tradition of social policy analysis that makes use of sociological, economic and legal paradigms.

In the mid-1980s, the Centre conducted the first comparative empirical research into financial poverty, material deprivation and the redistributive function of social security within the then European Community. In that same period, attention was also devoted to the functioning of policies in the fields of education, healthcare, housing and culture. Since then, the research focus has broadened. Social security remains the main point of interest, but the Centre now also studies such subdomains as taxation, education, the family, labour, health, migration, and mobility.

The Flemish SHARE fieldwork is coordinated by the Research Centre for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies (CELLO) at the University of Antwerp. This research centre carries out fundamental and policy supporting research in social demography and sociology of family, well-being and health. The core themes are family formation and dissolution, the combination of work and family and the socialization of care.

• University of Antwerp
• The country team’s institution, the Centre for Social Policy Herman Deleeck (CSB)
• Fieldwork coordination, the Research Centre for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies (CELLO)