Belgian economic miracle

The Belgian miracle was characterised by parallel trends of rising employment and real wages and low inflation, leading to improvements in living standards.

From 1945, however, demand for Belgium's traditional industries (steel and coal, textiles, and railway machinery in particular) grew across Europe, boosting the recovery of the Belgian economy.

The effect of the policy, which reduced the amount of circulating currency by two-thirds, was to limit inflation sharply and facilitate a general rise in living standards.

Historically, Belgium's urban workers had been paid less and lived in poorer conditions than those in comparable countries, even while the Belgian economy grew rapidly during the Industrial Revolution.

In 1944, shortly after the Liberation, the Belgian government of Achille Van Acker introduced a series of social security reforms which began the rise in living standards.

According to historian Martin Conway, the term is "singularly inappropriate" to describe Belgian economic recovery during the period because "growth rates, salaries, and levels of investment lagged substantially behind, and production costs significantly above, those of Belgium's competitor economies".