Single parents

So there’s a big drive from John Hutton to get single parents back into work. As Alice Miles points out in the linked article, a lot of this comes down to the money and where the parent fits into the earnings league table. It makes sense for a single parent partner in a law firm to pay someone to look after their kids while they go out and earn three quarters of a million quid. However, underlying the debate on the need for “affordable” (i.e. state subsidised) childcare, to enable the less high earners to rejoin the workforce too, lies the question of whether or not it is crazy for the state to pay to look after someone’s children so that they can go out to work and earn less than the amount that it is costing the state to have their kids looked after. Why not just give them the money and let them look after their own kids?

If the argument is that it may be beneficial for the single parent’s spiritual growth if he or (still much more usually) she goes back into work even if that actually costs the taxpayer more money overall, well, that’s a pretty interesting policy. For one thing, it amounts to subsidising low–paying employers, who are effectively paying a wage which is not otherwise viable in the market. And in the situation where the single parent does not want to work, and would rather take the benefits and look after their kids, it is significant extension of the nanny state to insist that they work nevertheless, even where this gives rise to a net cost to the taxpayer. Even if the single parents do want to take on economically unviable jobs, because it improves their self esteem, or enhances their social network, or whatever, is that a good reason for this to be funded by the taxpayer? Or could one say that they chose to have kids and have to bear the economic and social consequences of having done so? Are the obligations of a civilised society fulfilled by offering benefits so that once the kids have arrived, if the parent’s job is not enough to support the family, appropriate benefits are offered, in as cost–effective a manner as possible, to support the family in looking after the kids without the parent working?

I suppose in answering that question, we need to consider whether or not we have now reached the stage where the state benefits package must act as an incentive for people to have kids even if they cannot afford them, because the demographics of the country (caused by people living longer and the middle class giving up procreation) mean that otherwise we are going to run out of young people and become extinct as a nation.

Labels: UK politics