Zero Poverty Society

Sarah Marchal is Assistant Professor at the University of Antwerp. She is affiliated with the Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, where she conducts research on the design, accessibility, and effectiveness of targeted social policy provisions, from a cross-national comparative perspective. She has collaborated on various international research projects on social policy, poverty reduction, and inequality.Ive Marx is Professor of Socio-Economic Policy at the University of Antwerp, Director of the Centre for Social Policy Herman Deleeck, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn. He has done research on a wide range of topics including minimum income protection, poverty and wealth, and has published a number of books, including Minimum Income Protection in Flux (with Kenneth Nelson), two volumes on changing inequalities and societal impacts published with Oxford University Press, and the Handbook of In-Work Poverty (with Henning Lohmann).

• 1: Why minimum income protection, what is it, and how much is enough? 2: The state of means-tested minimum income protection for people not in work 3: Minimum income protection for workers: guaranteed incomes at the minimum wage 4: Design considerations: on optimal targeting, control and support 5: What kind of minimum income protection is politically viable? 6: Basic income advocates, sober up 7: Moving forward

The authors give an excellent discussion of the issue, the difficulties in achieving this objective, and the path toward reaching it. There is much more knowledge now about the extent of wealth at the top levels of society, and economists no longer accept Arthur Okun's trade-off between equity and efficiency. Work often gives an income that is below the poverty level. The authors offer an excellent review and analysis of the options to create a Zero Poverty Society.