Since the beginning ofthe 1980s, successive Belgian governments have pursued a social security policy that is a combination of cutting social expenditure on the one hand and improving the plight of lower income categories among benefit recipients on the other. This has been realised by means of a strategy of 'targeting within universalism ', i.e. improving the benefits for the poor and restricting them for the better off, but without abolishing the entitlements oft he latter category completely. The Belgian experience puts inperspective the 'middle class matters' argument, which predicts that, if cuts are made in social expenditure,the middle classes will use their political resources to defend the provisions they benefit from and to diminish the benefits reserved for the poor.