Reports emerged this week (this being media code for “the Government leaked it to test the waters”) that the Government is considering increasing child benefit for those with larger families. It should, of course, increase it for everybody.
Last week in the Spectator, the UK journalist Matthew Parris wrote a perceptive piece in which he argued that the primary cause of declining birth rates was simply that people do not want to have children. Our own Laura Perrins has argued on these pages repeatedly that people she calls “the child-free” should pay more to those with children. They are, I think, both right.
We’ll start with two assumptions: That children are necessary for the future survival of the country and indeed the human race. And that children, even were they not strictly necessary, are good and add to the gaiety and humanity of the nation. Every society needs a future to be invested in, and children represent that future.
Here’s what Parris said last week:
Against a background of concern at low fertility, and asked why they’re not contributing more to maintaining population numbers, most people are unlikely to reply: ‘Because babies are hard work, and restrict my freedom to live the life of my choice.’ Of course they won’t! ‘I don’t want children’ sounds selfish. They’ll instead say that they’d like to have more children, but for one reason or another beyond their control are prevented from having a bigger family. Even taking that into account, I note from the figures for respondents’ answers to the survey’s core questions that only one in five said they expected to have fewer children than they’d like.
‘What they’d like’ is key. Face it. Modern couples are making a lifestyle choice in curbing procreation. Babies are thoroughly inconvenient. Pets (say reports) are substituting for children as they’re less trouble. Dog ownership is increasing.
This is intuitively correct to me, and tallies with my own encounters with other people who either don’t have children and aren’t bothered by it, or actively chose to avoid having children. And indeed, I think that not having children is a perfectly valid and defensible choice.
But it’s also not the best choice for society. The best choice you can make for the rest of us is to have children. If for no other reason than that I need somebody to fund my state pension.
But even the pension thing doesn’t cover it: The more children a society has, the more lotto tickets it is buying. Not every child will be the next great innovator or employer or scientist or political leader, but the more lotto tickets a country buys, the better its chances at winning. And the more children a society has, the more child-friendly it will become through the laws of political supply and demand.
The not having children thing becomes, in time, a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fewer children there are, the less accustomed society becomes at dealing with children. It is a good thing, I think, when my wife and I get the awkward question about how many kids we have because having children is just about still seen as the norm in Ireland. If that changes, and the question becomes “oh, you’ve got kids?” – that’s when we’ll be in real trouble.
It is therefore I think necessary to reframe the whole child-having business, less as “a choice” and more as “a good choice”. Social supports for having children should not be framed as a support, but a reward. A recognition that families who have children in our society are doing something hard and important, and that those of us who haven’t done so benefit in myriad ways from their choice, while evading some of their sacrifices.
For example, it would be easy for me to note that my taxes pay somebody else’s child benefit, as well as the teachers in their schools, and their childcare. It’s less easy for me to note that my wife and I do not lose sleep raising a troublesome toddler who won’t go to bed at the appointed time, or that family holidays are much more affordable when you are buying two tickets instead of six, or that frankly I can sit down and watch whatever I want on television in the evening or afternoon without having to neglect a child who wants my attention.
Childlessness is (sometimes) a choice, but it is also (sometimes) a privilege. And there is no doubt, as Matthew Parris notes, that it is a choice more and more of us are making of our own volition.
Interestingly, the whole basis of the tax system in the west is that you pay more for your privileges. Taxes are higher on luxury items. Income taxes are higher on wealthier and more successful people. Childlessness, I think, should be treated like a luxury item. That doesn’t mean – as Laura suggests – that we start hitting the likes of me with punitive taxes. But it does mean I think that we should start treating those who have children in our society like the patriots they are, and rewarding them more amply for their service.
At present, child benefit comes to about €1,700 per year, per child. The cost to the taxpayer of this is €2.2billion annually. Last year’s budget surplus was almost ten times that amount. Child benefit could be doubled, if the state made the policy choice to do so.
Last week, I wrote about how this state has doubled its total spending since 2015. But in that same timeframe, the rate of child benefit has increased by a fiver in total. From €135 in 2015 to €140, on a monthly basis, in 2025. The increases in spending on child benefit have mainly come from extending the period in which it is paid, not increasing the rates.
I would argue, dear reader – and you can agree with me or not – that if we doubled spending in a decade but left the rate of child benefit untouched, that would tend to demonstrate a country whose priorities are all at sea. Those who are having children are doing the rest of us a service. We know the money goes to a good cause. We know it supports future generations. We know it helps struggling families.
What’s more, the state has a terrible habit of fiddling, instead of doing anything impactful and important. They’d rather dole out a fiver here and a tenner there across all welfare payments and tax rates, instead of actually focusing politics on achieving big results in one direction. Were it me, I’d do something big and impactful: Doubling child benefit would be an obvious thing.
It would be an affordable and radical step in the right direction. Even if it doesn’t result in a single additional birth, it is still right to reward people who do the right thing.