I would agree with the author that paid paternity leave should become an important issue within our society. Just having paid maternity leave systems, and not paid paternity leave systems as well, becomes a serious form of sex discrimination, and even things such as the Baby Bonus are basically paid only to the mother at present.

However I think that the decline in the birth rate can be attributed to a number of factors, not just finance or economics. Women in marriage have more children than women in single parent families, or women in cohabitation or de facto relationships etc, and in fact these types of relationships contain higher rates of just about every other type of social ill including higher rates of separation, child abuse, child poverty, welfare dependency, STD’s, abortion etc.

Basically, with a decline in marriage, and high rates of divorce, then the birth rates decline. This is found in almost every developed country, regardless of the economics of that country.

However an increase in paid paternity leave will help fathers become recognised as being actual parents, and not just second class parents, or second class citizens as at present.

Can one consider baby production simply in the context of needs to support continuance of lifestyles? Surely one must also consider very carefully such things as the carrying capacity of our land. How many people Australia can support? Current thinking has this as a figure below our present population number.

Our life style is surely as much a product of advertising and creation of wants. Intended to satisfy our human needs or those of the moneyed elite? Is our current form of economics the only one or is there a system more centered on human needs or at least with a balance tilted toward such?

Resources are being used at unsustainable rates is part of a long-term economic structure increased attention to recycling and efficiency of use? This implies a higher level of government interference just as the perceived ideological wisdom has it that government activity should be minimized in favor of the private sector. The work at the Rocky Mountain Institute says there is profit here for the private sector, certainly B P has reduced waste made production more efficient and profitted.

Thanks for this interesting article with some original ideas. The interface between economics, industry and reproductive decision-making is fascinating, and desperately in need of some critical analysis and creative thinking.

>>Put simply, Australia’s low birth rate is an example of market failure: market failure which justifies some form of government intervention.<<

Put simply, Australia's low birth rate is a social phenomenon that will not respond to government intervention in a stable and predictable manner.

If government imposes additional penalties on business in order to "address the problem", they will introduce further imbalance of risk/reward into the small business community.

Large businesses will simply pick and choose their new hires to avoid the problem completely. And continually chasing this down with additional "fairness" laws won't help; they'll just make more people redundant.

Nor is the answer to use taxpayers (that's where governments get their money, Chris) to subsidise twelve months of maternity/paternity leave - in addition to guaranteeing them their job back, no doubt. That just avoids the issue by lumbering everyone else with the responsibility to pay for it. Academic thinking at its most shortsighted, but much favoured by politicians, who haven't been within a bulls roar of a real job in their lives.

The real market failure here is allowing bank cartels to rip off their clients (the "big four" alone extract $1,500 a year in after-tax income from the pocket of every wage earner in the country), selling off public assets to allow private companies to rip off consumers for essential services (roads, buses, water, electricity etc.etc), and so on. Address that, and you will have no need to "encourage" people to have kids by showering them with gifts paid for by their already over-taxed brethren.

A policy of paid parental leave may actually decrease the burden on individual taxpayers in the long-term.

As I point out in the article, Australia has a changing demographic. With an ageing population the amount of taxpayers as a proportion of the Australian population will start to decrease in the future. This would require increased taxation of taxpayers to maintain current levels of government expenditure and such increased taxation would have a negative impact upon efficiency and incentives.

A policy of paid parental leave could help counter this demographic change by encouraging Australians to have children and therefore decrease the burden on individual taxpayers in the long-term.

I assumed that if the youthful population gets low in future, the government will simply "import" more of them through immigration.

Chris

Thanks for your article.

I have a friend who is a stay at home Dad - yet he sends the kids to pre-school - just like Mark Latham does.

How is that equivalent to mothering or proper parenting?

Cheers
Kay

Kay, glad that you enjoyed reading my article.

As for your question, I wouldn't know how to answer it because my research has mainly focused on the economic aspects of families and relevant policies.

Christopher
Australia’s overall population will not start to decline until about 30 – 40 years time. In the mean time, the population will gradually get older.

It is of course debateable as to whether or not Australia’s population is sustainable environmentally. Probably isn’t, like most other countries.

However parental leave seems to have minimal effect on birth rates in developed countries. The EU has a birth rate of about 1.53, and many EU countries have more maternity and paternity leave than Australia, although I think that maternity and paternity leave should be given as a natural right.

The birth rates of developed countries seem to be more related to the avg age at which a woman has her first child, marriage rates, divorce rates, and de facto relationship rates.

There is also the question of what type of family the child will be born into, as the wrong family type and upbringing, will cost the taxpayer much more money in the future.

Put simply, much of what Christian referred to are 'symptoms' of a sick and culturally unbalanced society which has yet to observe the full impact of the 60s.
But another symptom (from UK) where a married couple with 3 children can receive around 450 pounds per yr from gov in support, the same couple on the same incomes, if they divorce, can then receive 4500 Pounds annually.!

It took over 50 yrs for the Yir Yuront of Cape York to die out as a result of the introduction of something as simple as a steel axe, we have introduced MANY steel axes to our culture and Timkins among others have studiously pointed out some of the negative impacts.

We seem to be starting with the idea that 'child rearing' can just be fitted into an assumed legitimate lifestyle of both male and females equally in the work force. Can anyone justify this in terms of cultural cohesian, family solidarity, child security and long term population sustainability ?

By the figures were are all dying but just don't know it yet. -1.75 for each 2 living ? If ever there was a statistical 'prophet' that number is it.
Paid maternity leave would have to translate into higher tax, because why should it come off the bottom line of a struggling company ? Or a viable company which would BECOME struggling if it had to pay people for work not done.

So, I absolutely question the whole underlying assumption. I prefer to see 'fitting work into the more serious business of raising young humans' to be a wiser perspective.

Females leaving the work force would free them to explore untold challenges and possibilities which include a 'work from home' approach and would bring the price of land and houses down purely due to market forces. It would also increase the wages for males working for the same reasons of lack of labor supply.

Christian, my point was that you are looking at the problem - and I acknowledge it is a problem - from the very limited viewpoint of parental support. In doing so you make some very broad assumptions, such as:

>>[Australia's changing demographic] would require increased taxation of taxpayers to maintain current levels of government expenditure and such increased taxation would have a negative impact upon efficiency and incentives<<

Would not a more sensible approach be to reduce government expenditure, if there is insufficient taxation revenue to maintain current levels? Every family in the land has to tighten their belt each time bank charges, bus fares, rail fares, water rates, petrol prices etc. increase. Why does the government encourage us to believe that their revenue stream is sacrosanct?

Perhaps we should encourage our political representatives to start prioritizing the spending of our taxes, and putting these up for scrutiny as part of their election manifesto. At the same time, we could pass legislation that made it an offence for the government to bypass the manifesto they were elected upon. That should see the end, apart from anything else, of the massive waste of our money on government advertisements that tell us stuff we already know. I could think of a few other "services" we could well do without that would be far more beneficial to society than some kind of procreation incentive.

I know of a father of 6 children on a single income under $60K, who, with the government support of his wife seems to be humming along.

The secret of this?

A) Stable family life of both parents families
B) Stable marriage
C) Stable job (father)
D) Buying a run down house & upgrading accommodation over time
E) Careful saving (wife) and forfeit of employed income
F) Acceptance of division of labour / need for childcare by parents
G) Kids that don't dress in designer clothes
H) Active participation in multiple community groups (no idle spending / entertainment)
I) Infrequent & basic holidays

When the ALP (& others) returns it's attention to traditional family models and not crap like GLBT fringe groups, IVF and embryonic research, then the lack of 'adventuristic' government intervention may reward the community.

With current government policy and consumerism, why would any young lady not be out there looking for an IVF extro-womb pregnancy without having to look after a man or ruin her figure?

You cannot force selflessness out of people, but, you can certainly make traditional life look so 'repressive' of women that extra-ordinary means of sexuality/relationships seems a viable option.

Parental responsibility accounts for the success of a society, and with so many parents not having grown up, then... you can see what we get!