Pieter Vanhuysse
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pietervanhuysse.bsky.social
Pieter Vanhuysse
@pietervanhuysse.bsky.social

Professor of political economy & public policy, Dep. Politics; Chair, Danish Institute for Advanced Study, SDU. Political demography, aging democracies & welfare states, intergenerational fairness https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/en/persons/vanhuysse .. more

Political science 61%
Economics 11%
Pinned
Why do low-fertility societies implicitly tax their own reproduction?
ifstudies.org/blog/debunki...
Debunking the ‘Stork Theory’: Why Do Low-Fertility Societies Tax Their Own Reproduction?
What and how many resources does it really take to raise a newborn baby to productive adulthood? And who pays for it?
ifstudies.org

AI as a stochastic parrot

".... a system “for haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms it has observed in its vast training data, according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning”.
www.ft.com/content/9029...

Join us 13 Nov at #ESPAS for the main #EU strategic foresight and future-oriented policy event of the year:

"Europe towards 2040"

Cohosted by European Commission & European Parliament. ESPAS brings together 9 institutions thinking longer term to inform EU #policy

www.espas.eu/conference20...
Introduction | 2025 ESPAS conference
ESPAS provides a framework for cooperation and consultation at administrative level to work together on medium and long-term trends facing or relating to the European Union.
www.espas.eu
I love to see stuff like this because it helps explain to people trapped in tech-sponsored information bubbles the actually obvious fact that universities teach people to know & think things, and AI is a way to produce the effect of knowing & thinking things w/o actually knowing & thinking them.
Opinion | Why Even Basic A.I. Use Is So Bad for Students
www.nytimes.com

Join us 13 November at #ESPAS for the main #EU strategic foresight and future-oriented policy event of the year:

"Europe towards 2040: Charting a course in a new era of conflict and competition".

Cohosted by the European Commission & the European Parliament

www.espas.eu/programme202...
Programme | ESPAS conference - 2025
ESPAS provides a framework for cooperation and consultation at administrative level to work together on medium and long-term trends facing or relating to the European Union.
www.espas.eu

"You also shouldn’t pretend that by cognitively offloading a task, you will magically get smarter because you can focus on more advanced and complex skills. More advanced and complex skills are based on simpler ones."
substack.nomoremarking.com/p/are-we-liv...

"Are schools and universities still equipped to produce creative, original thinkers who will build better, more intelligent societies – or is the education system going to churn out mindless, gullible, AI essay-writing drones?"

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

What to do to make the EU fair for all current & future generations? Today 2nd session of European Citizens’ Panel on #Intergenerational #Fairness. My role as member of the 10-person Knowledge Committee: to summarize statements by six European Commissioners
citizens.ec.europa.eu/intergenerat...
Intergenerational Fairness
The European Commission is inviting you to help co-create a groundbreaking strategy on Intergenerational Fairness! Use this platform to share what you want it to look like, what you think is important...
citizens.ec.europa.eu

What course ahead for Europe in terms of #intergenerational #fairness?

I will address the annual conference next month of the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS), co-hosted by the European Commission and the European Parliament
www.espas.eu/conference20...
Introduction | 2025 ESPAS conference
ESPAS provides a framework for cooperation and consultation at administrative level to work together on medium and long-term trends facing or relating to the European Union.
www.espas.eu

A deep and original theorist, a generous colleague, and a kind friend has left us. RIP, Claus. You will be missed dearly.

www.faz.net/aktuell/feui...
Sozialwissenschaftler Claus Offe gestorben
Claus Offe prägte die Sozialwissenschaften mit scharfsinnigen Analysen und gesellschaftskritischen Perspektiven. Als Grenzgänger zwischen Soziologie und Politologie bleibt sein Werk wegweisend.
www.faz.net
Ein von Michael Zürn und mir verfasster Nachruf auf Claus Offe. Ein bemerkenswerter Mensch und Wissenschaftler www.faz.net/aktuell/feui...
Sozialwissenschaftler Claus Offe gestorben
Claus Offe prägte die Sozialwissenschaften mit scharfsinnigen Analysen und gesellschaftskritischen Perspektiven. Als Grenzgänger zwischen Soziologie und Politologie bleibt sein Werk wegweisend.
www.faz.net
It was a true honor to talk to legendary political scientist Adam Przeworski about how he understands the present crisis, what he learned from Chile and Poland, and how to move forward from here www.dissentmagazine.org/article/how-...
How Democracies Fall Apart - Dissent Magazine
An interview with Adam Przeworski.
www.dissentmagazine.org

¿Por qué grava la crianza de los hijos?
En el análisis de la baja fertilidad española —1,19 hijos por mujer—, Pieter Vanhuysse concluye que se deben replantear las políticas públicas, para permitir que aquellos que quieran ser padres puedan serlo
agendapublica.es/noticia/1894...
España tiene un persistente problema de baja fecundidad. ¿Por qué grava la crianza de los hijos?
En el análisis de la baja fertilidad española —1,19 hijos por mujer—, Pieter Vanhuysse concluye que se deben replantear las políticas públicas, en especial las fiscales, para permitir que aquellos qu...
agendapublica.es

What place-specific policies to combat depopulation from Europe's regions?
I was honored to give the keynote to the first International Congress on Depopulation, organised by the Gobierno de Aragon deep in the mountains at Segura de Banos
#demography #policy #regions

www.aragon.es/actualidad/i...
I Congreso Internacional de Despoblación 2025. Gobierno de Aragón
Congreso que busca sensibilizar sobre el problema de la despoblación y ofrecer a Aragón conocimiento y análisis de propuestas y proyectos, tanto teóricos como prácticos.
www.aragon.es

"Democrafting the future" : my podcast on why our welfare states are intergenerational piggy banks, the hidden asymmetric burden of social reproduction in low-fertility Europe, and all things political demography:
democraft.blog

First weekend at the European Citizens Panel on #Intergenerational #Fairness as a Knowledge Committee member: answering citizen requests, and a nice view of Parc Leopold, where 19th century scientific Brussels intermingles with contemporary Euro-Brussels

European Commisioner Micallef has just addressed the European Citizens' Panel on #Intergenerational #Fairness in Brussels. This weekend, as part of the Knowledge Committee for this Citizens Panel, I guide 150 citizens' input into the #EU strategy on IF
citizens.ec.europa.eu/intergenerat...
Intergenerational Fairness
The European Commission is inviting you to help co-create a groundbreaking strategy on Intergenerational Fairness! Use this platform to share what you want it to look like, what you think is important...
citizens.ec.europa.eu

Welfare states as lifecycle redistribution machines:
Why the piggy bank dwarfs Robin Hood in Europe

Policy Brief version at the European Social Observatory:
www.ose.be/publication/...
Welfare states as lifecycle redistribution machines | OSE
www.ose.be

European welfare states are inter-age piggy banks, much more than they are rich-to-poor Robin Hoods.
Understanding the cross-sectional operation of the piggy bank leads to a new focus on intercohort #sustainability & #fairness: the political economy of #generations

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
Welfare states as lifecycle redistribution machines: Decomposing the roles of age and socio-economic status shows that European tax-and-benefit systems primarily redistribute across age groups
Social scientists identify two core functions of modern welfare states as redistribution across (a) socio-economic status groups (Robin Hood) and (b) ‘the lifecycle’ (the piggy bank). But what is the ...
journals.plos.org

Pro-Elderly Welfare States within Child-Oriented Societies
theconversation.com/how-the-youn...

There is an asymmetry in socialization of downward v upward transfers. Children receive more than twice as many per-capita resources as older persons - but mot from the state. In aging, low-fertility societies, why has investment in children not been socialized more?
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Pro-Elderly Welfare States within Child-Oriented Societies
Families and policies both are main vehicles of intergenerational transfers. Working-age people are net contributors; children and older persons net beneficiari
papers.ssrn.com

Intergenerational Justice in Aging Societies
As EU Commissioner Glenn Micallef has opened a conversation about #Intergenerational #Fairness, how to measure this in our #policy models?

IJI offers a simple 4-dimensional snapshot:
Vanhuysse, P., Intergenerational Justice in Aging Societies, Gutersloh: Bertelsmann
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Glad to have been appointed as a member of the Knowledge Committee of the European Citizens' Panel on Intergenerational Fairness. We will be guiding 150 Europeans' input into EU Commissioner Micallef's developing strategy on intergenerational fairness
citizens.ec.europa.eu/concluded-on...

"Thinking hard strengthens your mental capacity. Using a bot to think for you or even just massaging what the bot gives you is empty calories for the mind. You’re robbing yourself of an education and diminishing your intellectual potential."
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/o...
Opinion | Are We Really Willing to Become Dumber?
www.nytimes.com

‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/o...
Opinion | ‘1984’ Hasn’t Changed, but America Has
www.nytimes.com