Wim Van Lancker

A central question in comparative social policy research is what the effect of a policy (change) is on outcomes such as employment, poverty or inequality. This is the part of the field with the most direct bearing on policy, yet much of its evidence still takes the form of macro–macro associations that lack theoretical clarity. In this article, we argue that better insight into mechanisms requires better theorising, and that better theorising also makes research more valid. Drawing on Coleman's macro–micro–macro model (‘Coleman's boat’), we set out what a complete mechanism‐based account of a policy effect involves: how a policy alters individuals' beliefs, opportunities and constraints, how individuals act in response, and how their actions aggregate into a macro‐level outcome. We argue that this mechanistic thinking matters for three forms of validity. It disciplines the choice of research design and estimand, and provides the explanation that an unbiased estimate alone does not (internal validity); it identifies the conditions under which findings generalise (external validity) and it tells us which policies to measure and how, and at which point in the causal chain (construct validity). Applying the model to Korpi and Palme's ‘Paradox of Redistribution’, we show that comparative research on policy effects has paid sustained theoretical attention to the first step, but rarely sets out the full causal chain and typically leaves aggregation implicit. Theoretically informed, mechanism‐based approaches would enhance the credibility, cumulative progress and policy relevance of comparative social policy research over the next few decades.

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 result, families that do not fit conventional models may be misclassified or entirely overlooked in poverty assessments and policy targeting. This is problematic since family structures vary substantially across European countries and became more diverse over time.This article introduces the Families in Households Typology (FHT), a classification system that uses relationship identifiers in EU-SILC microdata to reconstruct family structures within households. The FHT reduces the share of individuals placed in the residual ‘other’ category from over 20% to around 5%, particularly improving identification in Southern, Central, and Eastern European countries where multigenerational living arrangements are common. The results also show that nearly half of all single parents in Europe live with another adult and are not captured as single parents under conventional typologies. This has important implications for policy design: many single-parent households may be excluded from targeted support due to misclassification.Reclassifying households using the FHT also reshapes our understanding of living standards. The poverty risk of single parents is often overestimated when the Eurostat household typology is adopted. When single parents co-residing with kin or unrelated adults are correctly identified, their average poverty risk tends to be much lower. These findings highlight the importance of moving away from basic household counts towards relational classifications that more accurately reflect the diversity of family life across Europe, rather than using typologies that reflect the dominant family reality in Northern and Western Europe.

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 result, families that do not fit conventional models may be misclassified or entirely overlooked in poverty assessments and policy targeting. This is problematic since family structures vary substantially across European countries and became more diverse over time. This article introduces the Families in Households Typology (FHT), a classification system that uses relationship identifiers in EU-SILC microdata to reconstruct family structures within households. The FHT reduces the share of individuals placed in the residual ‘other’ category from over 20% to around 5%, particularly improving identification in Southern, Central, and Eastern European countries where multigenerational living arrangements are common. The results also show that nearly half of all single parents in Europe live with another adult and are not captured as single parents under conventional typologies. This has important implications for policy design: many single-parent households may be excluded from targeted support due to misclassification. Reclassifying households using the FHT also reshapes our understanding of living standards. The poverty risk of single parents is often overestimated when the Eurostat household typology is adopted. When single parents co-residing with kin or unrelated adults are correctly identified, their average poverty risk tends to be much lower. These findings highlight the importance of moving away from basic household counts towards relational classifications that more accurately reflect the diversity of family life across Europe, rather than using typologies that reflect the dominant family reality in Northern and Western Europe.

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. Furthermore, we identify theoretical and empirical issues with their model extensions of All-Star elections and their reapplication to All-NBA selections. (1) We deem MS’ argument for legitimate deviations between status and quality deeply problematic. (2) We argue that their inclusion of additional variables is not theoretically plausible in several instances, nor does it improve the models, which still support our findings. (3) We argue that All-NBA selections are a different application, not a better one, with no direct implications for the role of cumulative status bias in NBA All-Star elections. (4) We highlight flaws in MS’ models, such as irrelevant covariates, an indiscriminate approach to confounding and mediation, mismeasurement, and problematic post-treatment and post-outcome controls. (5) Our re-analysis confirms that, even in the All-NBA setting, previous status distinctions cumulatively bias outcomes.

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 to government revenue losses. That we have little understanding of the size and social distribution of these STEs for private pensions is partially due to limitations of existing data. The available data typically overlook preferential social security contributions and/or do not cover all three phases (i.e. contributions, returns on investments and pension withdrawals) of private pension saving. To highlight the importance of conducting new empirical research on STEs, we examine Belgian second pillar pensions for employees (i.e. voluntary occupational pensions for employees) using newly available administrative data. This case study clearly demonstrates that more accurate measurements of STEs for private pensions are needed, not only to reveal these ‘hidden welfare states’, but also to improve cross-country comparisons of private pension expenditures and to properly include private pension expenditures in discussions on the financial sustainability of pensions.

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 support in terms of (a) the likelihood of granting monthly financial support compared to other types of support, and (b) the amount of monthly support granted. In doing so, we focus on REDI, a digital rule‐based algorithmic system designed to assess families’ financial needs in Belgium. We draw on an online survey with respondents from 344 public centers for social welfare (PCSW), 40 interviews with respondents from 20 PCSWs, and policy guidelines from 86 PCSWs. Our findings demonstrate that the adoption of REDI can be linked to harmonization, yet only regarding the form and height of support, with users being more inclined to grant support monthly and provide a higher amount. Nonetheless, variance in welfare decisions persists, indicating a half‐hearted harmonization. With both financial and normative considerations at the local level playing a significant role in how the ADM system is shaped and implemented, this study highlights the importance of examining the organizational and political context in which ADM systems are deployed to understand their influence on welfare decisions.

This deliverable set out to analyse the context-specificity of financial support policies for families with children and (out-of-pocket fees for) childcare services, two policy areas that feature prominently in rEUsilience recommendations (Daly et al., 2025). Our first question was to what extent child-contingent benefits compensate for the out-of-pocket costs of formal childcare services at different income levels. Based on our newly introduced compensation ratio measure, we showed that the combination of child contingent benefits and out-of-pocket costs tends to be low-income targeted, in the sense that lower-income families pay lower fees for childcare and/or receive higher benefits. In Poland and Sweden, the out-of-pocket expenses for childcare tended to be lower (on average) across the income distribution than child-contingent benefits, whereas high-income families in Belgium and Spain paid more for childcare than they received as financial support. Secondly, we asked to what extent child-contingent benefits compensate for the out-of-pocket costs of formal childcare services for different family types. Here, we found that generally (with the exception of Spain) families with more children receive higher child-contingent benefits relative to their out-of-pocket costs for childcare, compared to families with fewer children. In all the four countries studied here, single-parent families receive higher child-contingent benefits relative to their out-of-pocket costs for childcare, compared to two-parent families. Finally, we asked to what extent child-contingent benefits compensate for the out-of-pocket costs of formal childcare services when families transition into work. Here, we found that, generally, the compensation ratio was higher for families on social assistance or employment at low wages, compared to families working at higher wages. This holds for single-parent families (with the exception of Poland) as well as two-parent families. Moreover, the extent to which the compensation rate was lowered with employment and at higher wage levels differed between countries, with the drop particularly notable in Belgium and moderate to absent in Poland. For average wage employees, the compensation ratio was lowest in Belgium compared to the other countries included here.

This is a methodological report for a Pilot Study conducted using The Social Study survey (Belgium) in January and February 2025.