Sweden typically is cited as having great family policies, where fathers are involved in child care and mothers are working. But is that just a reputation for Sweden? And are there other countries with really beneficial family policies?
@Anam Muzamill--Are there family policies that encourage Australian families to have a high literacy rate and political participation or are those issues high for other reasons?
Michael:
I think yours is a very timely question, at least because of the present state of the economy in traditional welfare states and also the importance of family policies in some developing countries.
Let me add that I would expect that the better investigations responding to your question should actually focus on the characteristics, the pros and the cons of different policies, with no special commitment to ranking the different policies. It would be difficult for me to list the many relevant factors to compare, but some of them may include the conditions that the families have to satisfy to receive support, economic and political dependency of families receiving support, weakness of the political constituency, too direct linkages between economic subsidies and consumption-oriented economic growth, the articulation between economic support and other social support.
Dear Michael
Interesting question. Before you have someone answer this, should you not define what do you mean with family friendly.
In welfare states, many benefits are provided to families. And yet you see the size of the family shrinking and fewer adults opting to start families. While one understands declining fertility as a correlate of advancing societies, such rates below a certain point (population replacement, some other measure?) plus the fact that fewer people opting to become parts of a family speak volume. If people vote with their feet, what does this tell of such societies and their "family friendly" policies.
Well, I believe Australia is very generous in relation to the benefits that they give to families - in comparison with other countries - even if you cannot find a job for longer than six months you will continue to receive benefits. Maternity/Paternity leaves - payment to the parents when they have a child and child care rebate and school support payments and the list goes on.
Agree that specific family policies need to be identified. In Canada, since many family-friendly policies are under the jurisdiction of provinces, knowing the specific policy is important. For example, Manitoba has good regulations for child care facilities and necessity of good training for child care workers; Quebec has good child care--and its cost is subsidized. For policies that assist family caregivers of frail members, various provinces make different benefits available--and the federal legislation that was supposed to help family caregivers has very strict eligibility requirements so few qualify.
Also, agree it is better to evaluate specific policies as to effectiveness and funding, rather than rate countries, as cross-cultural differences are great, that is, some things are free in some countries and affect benefits (such as universal health coverage paid for by the general revenue rather that fee-based, as we have in Canada).
Yes, but what is the ultimate aim of these policies. It would be easy to say to improve the welfare of the family. But how do you define that. Does providing free services that families use count, or is it more than that. Does providing free services improve the welfare of the family and if so which services should be provided. What is the metric of welfare. As you can see, giving these services in Europe leads people away from starting families. What does it say for these policies.
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