As someone with 3 kids I completely agree with your point James about "encouraging existing parents to have more kids." If the government is serious about the issue.
This will be by far the path of least resistance.
We're not having any more due mainly to starting relatively late in life. But I could imagine a scenario where we had another…
As someone with 3 kids I completely agree with your point James about "encouraging existing parents to have more kids." If the government is serious about the issue.
This will be by far the path of least resistance.
We're not having any more due mainly to starting relatively late in life. But I could imagine a scenario where we had another one if we'd started earlier and/or had the kids closer together.
If the government is serious about the issue it would need to do the following 4 things (IMHO).
1. Build more houses. We thankfully live in a house big enough where each kid can have their own bedroom but I realise the vast majority of millennials are not so lucky.
2. Make full-time nursery free or almost free for everyone starting from age 1. At one stage where we had two kids in nursery full-time our fees were more than mortgage payments. We're lucky enough to be high income earners, but it would have been extremely difficult to have paid for all 3 at the same time. Ontario has significantly reduced nursery fees, which has benefited my sister.
3. End the two-child benefit cap. So disappointing that Labour is not going to reverse this.
4. Have escalating benefits the more children a family has. I think to make it politically palatable this would probably have to take the form of tax breaks/credits rather than direct payments. Maybe something like lowering the rate of income tax for a set number of years (until kid is 5 years old) with a lower rate for more kids. This way it would not be seen as a handout. I know Hungary is trying something similar, bit not sure what the result has been so far. Also I realise these sort of baby bonus schemes have a bit of fascist overtone to them, which makes me a little uncomfortable even if I think they might work.
And even then, I think most of these will probably have only a marginal impact on birth rates, so immigration is going to have to remain a part of the solution. And I, like I suspect most readers here, am happy with that.
As someone with 3 kids I completely agree with your point James about "encouraging existing parents to have more kids." If the government is serious about the issue.
This will be by far the path of least resistance.
We're not having any more due mainly to starting relatively late in life. But I could imagine a scenario where we had another one if we'd started earlier and/or had the kids closer together.
If the government is serious about the issue it would need to do the following 4 things (IMHO).
1. Build more houses. We thankfully live in a house big enough where each kid can have their own bedroom but I realise the vast majority of millennials are not so lucky.
2. Make full-time nursery free or almost free for everyone starting from age 1. At one stage where we had two kids in nursery full-time our fees were more than mortgage payments. We're lucky enough to be high income earners, but it would have been extremely difficult to have paid for all 3 at the same time. Ontario has significantly reduced nursery fees, which has benefited my sister.
3. End the two-child benefit cap. So disappointing that Labour is not going to reverse this.
4. Have escalating benefits the more children a family has. I think to make it politically palatable this would probably have to take the form of tax breaks/credits rather than direct payments. Maybe something like lowering the rate of income tax for a set number of years (until kid is 5 years old) with a lower rate for more kids. This way it would not be seen as a handout. I know Hungary is trying something similar, bit not sure what the result has been so far. Also I realise these sort of baby bonus schemes have a bit of fascist overtone to them, which makes me a little uncomfortable even if I think they might work.
And even then, I think most of these will probably have only a marginal impact on birth rates, so immigration is going to have to remain a part of the solution. And I, like I suspect most readers here, am happy with that.