2/10/09

Possible Motivators for Encouraging Smaller Families

INCENTIVES
  • Payments for not having children. Tax incentives to single-child families. Greater SS accrual to parents with only a single child. (help alleviate some anxiety about old-age support)
  • Tax incentives to families in which both parents are 25 or older at time of child’s birth. (delaying fertility)
  • Paid, government-subsidized college education/vocational training available only to offspring of single-child families, similar to the GI Bill.
  • Government from local to national level should be geared to support one child per family, in the areas of enrichment (music, art, sports), health care, and higher education. Each adult in the community would understand that if they have one child, that child would be fully and richly supported (call this 100% support level). If they have a second biological child, the government support for each of the two children will drop to not ½, but 1/3. A third child, and support disappears for all three children. This is brutal, because it’s depriving children, when it is not the children’s fault. How to penalize the parents without penalizing the children?

* Priorities in jobs, housing
* Government underwriting of community improvements as reward for achieving stable population

DISINCENTIVES

* Higher taxes for each additional child
* SS payment percentage to parents decreases with each additional child
* Higher maternity and educational costs for each additional child ("user fees")


Credit!! This outline is largely taken from a table on the website, "www.dieoff.org", from an excellent paper written by Dr. John Weeks. There has been some adding by myself, expanding on some of his ideas.

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