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To promote transparency and provide information, the Federal Planning Bureau regularly publishes the methods and results of its works. The publications are organised in different series, such as Outlooks, Working Papers and Planning Papers. Some reports can be consulted here, along with the Short Term Update newsletters that were published until 2015. You can search our publications by theme, publication type, author and year.
Forecasts & Outlook - FORVERG201901 (fr), (nl),
The Federal Planning Bureau has developed within the Nowcasting project a dynamic microsimulation model for nowcasting and medium-term forecasts (currently up to 2020) of indicators of poverty and social exclusion. Key messages of this project are that nowcasting and medium-term forecasting are now possible using a fully dynamic microsimulation model. The provisional results of the model suggest that the overall poverty risk would remain stable, but that of the 65+ subpopulation would decrease over time, while that of the younger population would show a small increase. Furthermore, the increase of overall ine-quality would come to a halt and the level of inequality would become more stable. Finally, the very low work intensity rate would continue its decrease, driven by the continuing increase of the employment rate among the working-age population.
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-19 (en),
The Ageing fund, which was set up in 2001 as an instrument to ensure the long-term sustainability of public finances, was abolished in 2016. Its abolition symbolises the transition from a strategy of pre-funding the budgetary cost of ageing, which dominated in the early 2000s, to a strategy based mainly on reforms to the socioeconomic model. The latter was initiated after the global financial crisis and has been firmly stepped up in recent years. This Planning Paper describes the economic and institutional factors behind the shift in sustainability policy, as well as the role of the various stakeholders: the governments of course, but also the High Council of Finance, the European authorities and the Federal Planning Bureau, which has produced long-term analyses and assessments over the past 25 years that have both reflected and helped to shape the pursued policy.
Closed series - Planning paper 117 (fr), (nl),
The 2018-2070 demographic outlook presents the evolution of the population and households in Belgium from 2018 to 2070. The assumptions have been updated, taking into account new observations available, in particular population statistics as at 1 January 2018 and movements (births, deaths, internal and international migration) for 2017. The outlook also provides specific insight into medium-term fertility rates.
Forecasts & Outlook - EFPOP1870 (fr), (nl),
Reports - REP_MINIMA_11760 (mix),
Forecasts & Outlook - FORVERG201801 (fr), (nl),
In preparation of the 2018 Pension Adequacy Report by the European Commission and the Social Protection Committee, teams from Belgium, Sweden and Italy use their microsimulation models to simulate the possible developments of pension adequacy while taking into account the set of economic and demographic projections developed by the AWG. The results of this exercise complement the AWG simulations of pension expenditures in a context of demographic. The results described in detail in this report were summarised in section 5.1.2. of the 2018 Pension Adequacy Report.
Reports - REP_11732 (en),
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic outlook 2018-2023 (fr), (nl),
This paper explores the possibility of building a multiregional migration model at the EU level based on Eurostat statistics on migration by country of previous and next residence, by country of birth or by citizenship. These statistics are used to build a consistent origin-destination matrix for the EU Member States. In this case, ’consistent’ means that the sum of all intra-EU movements should be equal to 0. This matrix is then used to compute migration rates between EU countries, which can be inserted into a multiregional population projection model.
This paper shows that the currently available official statistics on migration flows can be used to build a multiregional migration model at the EU level. Although more developments should be implemented to test and improve the model, it produces promising results.
Working Papers - Working Paper 07-18 (en),
Reports - OPREP11700 (fr), (nl), (nl),
Reports - REP_CEP13_11694 (fr),
Reports - REP_CEP12_11678 (nl),
The Federal Planning Bureau publishes its 2017-2070 demographic projections for Belgium. This exercise notably reveals the impact of the disappearance of the baby boom generation, as well as certain regional differences.
Forecasts & Outlook - EFPOP1770 (fr), (nl),
This Working Paper analyses various alternative population projections. The first approach shows the impact of alternative future development scenarios for the population growth components. The effects of some of these scenarios on the development in social expenditure and the at-risk-of-poverty rate for pensioners are also analysed. The second approach consists in carrying out a sensitivity analysis of the population projection to some model parameters, in particular the observation periods selected to estimate trends.
Working Papers - Working Paper 01-18 (fr),
The Ageing Working Group (AWG) was established in December 1999 by the Economic Policy Committee of the European Council ECOFIN. This working group is responsible for producing common budgetary projections on age-related public expenditure items. Each Member State calculates its longterm pension expenditure based on common assumptions discussed in the AWG.
The demographic and macroeconomic assumptions in the public pension expenditure projection of Belgium for the AWG are different from those retained in the national projection of the Study Committee on Ageing, as well as the scope of pension definition. This projection is carried out using the MALTESE model of the Federal Planning Bureau.
This report presents the new Belgian pension projection 2016-2070 that will be published in the “2018 Ageing Report” next year. In addition, these results will be used in the context of the “Fiscal Sustainability Report” of the European Commission that assesses the mid-term and long-term fiscal situation of Member states.
Other publications - REP_COUNTRYFICH2017 (en),
The supplementary table 29, “Accrued-to-date pension entitlements in social insurance” of the Eurostat transmission program covers the statutory pensions and occupational pension schemes in social insurance in Belgium. In a working paper that was published May 2017, the Federal Planning Bureau presented a first methodology to complete the columns on the statutory pension schemes. Following this publication and the preliminary data transmission towards Eurostat mid-2017, the decision was taken to change the model and implement the PBO-methodology. Moreover, the first model contained an error in the programming part which lead to an overestimation of the accrued rights. This error has been corrected for. Consequently, the accrued-to-date pension entitlements are lower than the ones presented in the working paper.
Reports - REP_11311 (en),
The Commission for Pension Reform 2020-2040 proposed an adjusted pension system which calculates pensions based on collected points. An important aspect of that system implied that past wages should be adjusted on the basis of the average wage increase. This Working Paper investigates who will be the winners and the losers when this adjustment mechanism is introduced by means of a points system in the salaried workers' scheme, and why. We show that people with low pensions, low-skilled workers, tenants and women nowadays have certain career features which make sure that they gain more often from such an operation than people with high pensions, highly skilled workers, owners and men. This also underlines the importance of minimum schemes in the impact of such a reform.
Working Papers - Working Paper 09-17 (nl),
This paper proposes a new model to account for unobserved heterogeneity in empirical modelling. The model extends the well-known Finite Mixture (or Latent Class) Model by using the Johnson family of distributions for the component densities. Due to the great variety of distributional shapes that can be assumed by the Johnson family, the method does not impose the usual a priori assumptions regarding the type of densities that are mixed.
Working Papers - Working Paper 14-17 (en),
Other publications - FORVERG201701 (fr), (mix), (nl),
Forecasts & Outlook - Economic outlook 2017-2022 (fr), (mix), (nl),
Supplementary table 29, "Accrued-to-date pension entitlements in social insurance" for Belgium will be published for the first time in 2017. This table covers the pension schemes in social insurance: statutory pensions and occupational pensions, whether they are funded or not. Table 29 shows the pensions entitlements on an accrued-to-date basis. These are present values of the pension entitlements of the retired population and the part of pension entitlements that is already accrued by the future beneficiaries. As such, accrued-to-date liabilities do not represent public debt and are not an indicator of the fiscal or financial sustainability of the pension systems and are only appropriate for national accounts purposes. Accrued-to-date liabilities should only be interpreted as an asset from the households in national accounts’ terminology. An assessment of the sustainability of the pension systems can be found in the reports of the Ageing Working Group or the Belgian Study Commission for Ageing.
Working Papers - Working Paper 06-17 (en),
Working Papers - Working Paper 03-17 (nl),
Reports - REP_CEP8_11421 (mix),
Forecasts & Outlook - EFPOP1660 (fr), (nl),
This Working Paper presents, on the basis of information available until July 2016, a projection at unchanged policy until 2030 of the population at risk of poverty or social exclusion in Belgium, as defined in the framework of the Europe 2020 Strategy. This population should amount to 2.232 million people in 2018, or 418 000 more than the Europe 2020 target. By 2030, its share should shrink to 16.1%, still 5.6 percentage points higher than the goal resulting from the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Working Papers - Working Paper 12-16 (en), (fr), (nl),
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