Monthly evolution of the consumer price index and of the so-called health index, which is used for the price indexation of wages, social benefits and house-rent.

Belgium's population growth in 2022 is exceptionally high (+104 000 inhabitants) according to the new demographic projections. In the long term, however, the increase is less dynamic than in the past thirty years. Population growth in Flanders will remain relatively similar to that of recent decades. Wallonia is experiencing significantly lower growth than previously. In Brussels, the population will hardly increase in projection.

The European Commission released on 9 November 2022 a proposal to reform the framework for Member States' fiscal surveillance. The proposed new framework is based on risks to debt sustainability. For Belgium, which is highly exposed to these risks, it would imply a rapid and large-scale fiscal consolidation, and would be no less stringent than the fiscal rules previously in force and suspended since Covid-19. The proposal has not yet been adopted and still needs to be negotiated with the Member States.

MIDAS, the dynamic microsimulation model that focuses on the social sustainability of pensions, has undergone a major revision in recent years to improve the validity of the projections. This Working Paper not only reports on this revision, but also describes some important new modules.

In international agreements, countries are considered responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions linked to their production activities. The carbon footprint provides an alternative assessment of this responsibility by attributing emissions to the country where the goods and services are consumed. This study presents the production-based CO2 emissions and the carbon footprint of the three Belgian regions for the year 2015. According to the results, the carbon footprint exceeds production-based emissions for all three regions. This implies that their contribution to global CO2 emissions is larger from a consumption perspective than from a production perspective.

European Regulation No 691/2011 obliges the member states of the European Union to deliver six environmental economic accounts to Eurostat. The accounts concerned are the three accounts that have been obligatory since 2013, the Environmental Taxes by Economic Activity (ETEA), the Air Emissions Accounts (AEA) and the Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA), as well as the three accounts that have to be delivered as of 2017, the Environmental Goods and Services Sector (EGSS), the Environmental Protection Expenditure Accounts (EPEA), and the Physical Energy Flow Accounts (PEFA).

In this publication the National Accounts Institute presents the EPEA for the years 2014-2020.

A new evaluation of public support to R&D in Belgium shows that regional subsidies and the federal partial exemption from payment of the withholding tax for researchers may have helped to increase R&D expenditure in Belgium. The results are less positive for some benefits granted by the federal government through corporate income taxation. As these tax benefits account for the lion's share of the rapidly increasing budgetary costs of public support for R&D, the efficiency of public support could be increased.

There are only eight years left to realise the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The report presents an analysis of the Federal Plan on Sustainable Development adopted in 2021. It provides a detailed overview of Belgium's current international position and the differences between women and men. Finally, it presents approaches for integrating quantitative elements into sustainable development scenarios.

In Belgium, the Law on Fiscal and Social Greening of Mobility of 25 November 2021 eliminates corporate tax deductibility for all company cars except those with zero CO2 emissions.  The main effect of the tax reform is an accelerated electrification of the company car fleet and an accelerated decline in CO2 emissions. Compared to the no-reform scenario, the reform leads to an increase in net tax revenues of about 1 billion euro on an annual basis. 

Education is crucial for the development of society. It is also a key element for our economy. This article examines the educational level of pupils in Belgium. While it had already been falling in recent years, this level has fallen further following the Covid-19 pandemic. Without catching up, the long-term economic cost of this decline in educational attainment would be considerable.

A macro-economic analysis of the activity of multinational groups is of particular interest for economic policy in a country like Belgium with a longstanding tradition of openness to foreign investment. This working paper combines a database of enterprise groups that are active in Belgium with industry-level data from the national accounts to show that multinational groups play an important role in the Belgian economy. Together, foreign affiliates and firms that are part of a Belgian multinational group account for more than 40% of GDP, 25% of total employment and 75% of exports.

In the context of the significant increase in the number of beneficiaries of the health and disability insurance observed over the last 20 years in Belgium, we seek to develop an explanatory model for work incapacity and disability. On the basis of SILC data, we attempt to identify and prioritise the effects of different factors that may influence the probability of employees' transitions between socio-economic statutes, and in particular to and from primary incapacity and disability.