"ImPRovE". Poverty Reduction in Europe: Social Policy and Innovation

ImPRovE (Poverty Reduction in Europe: Social Policy and Innovation) is an international research project that aims to improve the basis for evidence-based policy making in the area of poverty, inequality, social policy and social innovation in Europe. (http://improve-research.eu/?page_id=5)

It is carried out by the ImPRovE Consortium and co-financed by the European Commission (Project officer at the European Commission: Marc Goffart). The project runs from March 2012 till February 2016 and is co-ordinated by the Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy (University of Antwerp, Belgium).

The two central questions driving the ImPRovE project are:

• 1. How can social cohesion be achieved in Europe?
• 2. How can social innovation complement, reinforce and modify macro-level policies and vice versa?

The output of ImPRovE will include over 55 research papers, about 16 policy briefs and at least 3 scientific books. The ImPRovE Consortium will organise two international conferences (March 2014 and February 2016).

In addition, ImPRovE will develop a new database of local projects of social innovation in Europe, cross-national comparable reference budgets for 6 countries (Belgium, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Spain) and will strongly expand the available policy scenarios in the European microsimulation model EUROMOD.