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The family of the future depends on the collective decisions of the present

2022-01-25T15:57:18.292Z


The director of the London School of Economics proposes to rethink the social contract. Childcare, he says, must be part of the infrastructure of public services


A couple photographs their children in Ginza, Tokyo, on October 2. Yusuke Harada (NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Harnessing the skills of women in the labor market is economically beneficial and improves the well-being of children after their first year of life. Greater father involvement in those early parenting years also has clear benefits for the child. Thus, a social contract that rebalances caring responsibilities between men and women and makes the unpaid work of the latter paid would make our societies richer and fairer. Our children will do better both academically and psychologically if, in their first months of life, they are raised by involved parents and if, after that very early childhood, they have access to quality childcare and preschool services.The beneficial effect that is observed is especially important for children who grow up in poorer families, and also improves social mobility.

There are many models that imply a greater allocation of public resources to the provision of affordable and quality child care.

Whether this support prioritizes more family-based care or one more focused on services outside the home is a choice that, ideally, should be left to individuals and families.

That the costs of these parental leaves and that child care were financed by the State instead of by companies and employers in general would help to equalize more the conditions for men and women at work.

The key is that public policies support men and women equally so that each one has the freedom to choose and so that the allocation of skills in the economy is optimal.

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We need a new social contract

Ideally, governments would provide a menu of options for families – maternity and paternity leave, or better yet, parental leave that can be shared – with public funding for both institutionalized out-of-home child care and out-of-home care. In the home. The choices and decisions made in this regard are very personal and depend largely on individual circumstances. The critical change that needs to occur is to stop caring for members of the younger generation being ignored, taken for granted or taken for granted by pigeonholing it into the category of unpaid work. It has to become an essential part of the infrastructure of public services, such as health or education.It must also be flexible to accommodate the ways in which the organization of both work and families is changing. Doing so will improve the lives of both men and women, make children more effectively supported, and create employment that will be female in many cases.

Now, although the provision of child care is key, there are many policies that can also help us move forward on the path of a more equal labor market.

A more flexible job with benefits associated with the worker —so that they are not lost when changing jobs or companies and that can be adjusted depending on whether they work part-time or full-time— would help both men and women to balance their responsibilities as caregivers with the changing work model.

A tax system in which people pay taxes as individuals is better than one that encourages joint taxation by couples, for example.

When married couples file joint returns, the second recipient (who is usually the woman) sees her income taxed at the same marginal rate as her partner,

However, policies alone are not enough; the social contract has to change within the home as well. As we have already seen in Japan and Korea, even the world's most generous paternity leave policy will not work without an adjustment in social attitudes. The Nordic countries serve as an interesting contrast in this regard. There the social contract has evolved over decades into what it is today: a contract characterized by high levels of female employment, generous public support from the state, and a greater assumption of unpaid work by men. This model has managed to sustain high levels of income and fertility, which have in turn served to sustain population levels. The contrast is offered, for example, by Korea, where,despite increasingly generous policies in this field, currently the lowest fertility rate in the world is registered, of only 0.9 children per woman (and it would have to be 2.1 to guarantee the stability of the population level of the country), because social attitudes have not changed.

Can we afford to introduce such a substantial change in our social contract?

I would rather say that what we cannot afford is not to do it.

Family structures are evolving rapidly: couples are marrying later and women are starting to have children at an older age;

there are more single-parent families;

populations are ageing, and birth rates are falling all over the world except in Africa.

We need our social contract to catch up with the needs of modern families and economies.

Enabling more women to use their talents in the workplace will serve to increase output, productivity and tax revenue well above the cost of providing better public support for childcare services.

Involving fathers more in that care will also improve children's well-being and allow us to raise a more productive young generation, whose higher incomes also provide added tax revenue for pensions and health care for an older generation that will not leave to grow up

Instead of trying to manage intergenerational compromises within families—a path that has led to the very inequitable results we have achieved in that arena throughout history—we need to share those risks together.

whose higher incomes also provide added tax revenue for pensions and health care for an older generation that will not stop growing.

Instead of trying to manage intergenerational compromises within families—a path that has led to the very inequitable results we have achieved in that arena throughout history—we need to share those risks together.

Minouche Shafik

(Alexandria, Egypt, 1962) is an economist.

This excerpt is a preview of 'What we owe each other.

A new social contract', which Paidós publishes on January 26. 


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Source: elparis

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