Which Futures for the Welfare State? Three Scenarios Mapping the Complex Interactions between Climate Change and Policies against Child Poverty in the Walloon Region by 2050

Since the early 2000s, with the ratfication of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child,
child poverty has become a major public problem in many countries, prompting governments to develop specific policies to tackle it. These policies, addressed to a specific public, has come into tension with the universalist model of the Welfare State, accompanying its transformation into an Active Welfare State.
In Belgium, this rationale became more pronounced in the 2010s with a significant reduction
in public spending on social protec4on, even though poverty levels among the population,
particularly among children, were tending to worsen. This situation came to a head with the
outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when public authorities had to relaunch a universally
applicable social protection system to deal with this health, social and economic crisis. In the
aftermath of this unprecedented situation, many uncertainties emerged about the possible
futures of the fight against poverty, particularly in view of the increasingly recurrent major
social impacts of climate change.
Against this backdrop, the Walloon Institute for Evalua4on, Foresight and Statistics was
commissioned by the Walloon government to carry out a foresight study about the possible
futures of policies to combat child poverty (and, by extension, of the Welfare State). The study produced three scenarios developing three contras4ng forms of Welfare State, making it possible to understand and map out possible trajectories for the transformation of social
policies in response to climate change and environmental transition issues.
Based on the methodology of the French school of prospective, this research mobilized a large panel of experts and stakeholders through various workshops and participatory processes to study the possible interactions of 33 variables in a systemic way. The results of this study highlight issues for the future that concern not only the Walloon Region, but also European democracies.