Vouchers in Belgium for informality

The issue of bringing informal workers into social security is a challenge even in the wealthier and more urbanized countries. Belgium adopted a program based on vouchers that has enjoyed success. The program provides a framework for small employers and households employing domestic or other service workers to buy vouchers through authorized distributors. Those vouchers provide access to social security benefits. This seems to be a good example on how providing a simple framework can induce significant increases in participation at a low administrative cost. The Belgian labor force is roughly 5 million people, and the voucher system had 760 thousand active users in 2010, so the share of work covered is not small. The system is still growing, and by 2010 there were 2,664 companies supporting the distribution of the vouchers. It is interesting that when the word voucher is used in the context of social programs, it is often to define a mechanism to distribute a public subsidy, while in this case, the voucher is really issued by households and small employers to allow workers to access the benefits of social security.