CRITICS call it a “hearth bonus” or “keep-your-kids-out-of-school money”. The government prefers Betreuungsgeld (“child-care benefit”). Few of its ideas are as contentious as a planned €150 ($199) monthly payment to parents who do not put their children into crèches [day care centers].The issue is whether this really fixes any of Germany's demographic problems:
Germany’s long-term worries include a shrinking and ageing population, immigrants who are not fully integrated into the workforce and women who are both underemployed and underpaid. German women work fewer hours than women in most other OECD countries (see chart). The gap in median pay is the third-widest in the club, after South Korea’s and Japan’s. That is partly because mothers stay at home. In 2008 just 18% of children under the age of three were in formal child care, against an OECD average of 30%.It appears that the new family policy would not really accomplish the objective of helping to raise the birth rate--if that is the objective. Subsidized day care--essentially the opposite of what this legislation proposes--is much more likely to promote among women a belief that they can work and also have a second child.
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