How do we solve this if people hate benefits?

[is30tooyoungformidlifecrisis]

I've been mulling this over for a while and really trying to avoid a goady post but I'm genuinely interested in what people think.

The reality is in the UK we have a rapidly declining birth rate and an ageing population, so in a decade we're going to be in trouble as a country.

On an individual level, people (that I see online) seem to be very anti-benefits for parents. I always see the line 'if you can't afford kids don't have them' etc. But the reality is that the cost of living is going up, childcare is up, housing is up, and if people literally cannot afford kids they won't have them and that's what we're seeing happen now.

On a wider society level, we need to encourage people to have children to keep our population stable, especially since politicians and the media have stirred up so much hatred towards immigrants so we can't rely on immigration to solve our population problem. The only solution I see is to increase benefits for having children and make it easier - eg. increase maternity pay, subsidise childcare costs, increase child benefit maybe in a means-tested way. But I think all that would go down like a lead balloon with people crying 'the government shouldn't pay for your kids, pay for them yourself' - but really, if the government have got the country to a point where it's a real problem, it's on them to sort it. What do you all think?

Harsh!
but maybe, move adults over 70 on to palliative care rather than treatment ie, less cancer treatment, transplants, heart surgery etc would save the nhs a fair amount of money.

Ideal world though - 2 full time incomes (minimum wage so a household income of £46,000) should be able to afford mortgage, bills, childcare etc without having to rely on benefits. Unfortunately wages have remained stagnant whilst the cost of living has risen meaning there is little option for many families but to claim help. I imagine the biggest element of universal credit is housing/rent, but no one would dare tell landlords they need to lower the rent and make homes more affordable. That would be the ideal start!

This is something I'm thinking about, I have a 2yo and I'm pregnant with my 2nd, I'm 31. When I went to uni, my parents didn't help financially at all - but I didn't expect them to, I was an adult, I moved out, I got a job and paid my rent, though I did have government loans and grants. But I see on mumsnet all the time parents paying their child's rent or even more while they're at university and I'm thinking, do I need to save to do that in 15 years?

I don’t think benefits or money would be an incentive for people to have more children.
The young people I know who don’t have children aren’t child-free because of costs, they are child-free because they want to be. They all live quite comfortable lives, enjoy travelling, going out etc and don’t want to be tied down, they also don’t like the idea of their bodies changing through pregnancy.

I also know more people who have only one child than I do people who have multiple children, and again their reasoning doesn’t often boil down to costs.

Social media has made the younger ones more self focused I think. It’s also shown them there is more to life than just having a family.
I think we are heading towards the end of the human race in a couple of hundred years time. I don’t think the current way of thinking can be turned around easily.

Ahh that's a political question rather than economic. The retired or soon to retire will vote for politicians promising "good" state pensions, benefits and healthcare at a cost of higher taxes for those in work.

Those in work will vote for "poorer" state pensions etc in order to avoid tax rises.

Then it comes down to who wins at the election!

People seem to also not realise that a declining birth rate brings a whole new problem which no money for pensions for the current population in the work force when we get to retire.

I don't get and by all means argue for a reduced population. But it makes sense for that reduced population to be younger!

Ahh that's a political question rather than economic. The retired or soon to retire will vote for politicians promising "good" state pensions, benefits and healthcare at a cost of higher taxes for those in work.

People already work less to reduce their tax burden, this will just encourage more of the same.

If you earn “too much” then your children won’t get a full student loan. You are expected to top up your child’s loan to at least the full amount.

We are set on stopping at one, dh is even getting a vasectomy. His sisters are horrified at the idea, they definitely want multiple children. We live in a 2 bed flat in London and have zero desire to significantly increase our mortgage or move further out so having one child makes that possible.

His sister has 1 3 year old daughter, she lives in America and is spending just as much as Londoners on daycare, she lives with her MIL and of course in the usa hospital delivery costs are horrific. She intends for her daughter to continue in the jewish kindergarten she is attending which educates all the way to high school level and in America all jewish schools are private. This would be expensive for 2. The other sister is trying to build her life in her fiancee's country but it's so hard to find a job for her that she is cleaning houded and she is also staying with her inlaws. I suspect this is the real reason why the wedding keeps getting delayed.

The economic situation globally isn't going to improve in the near future. I can see life not becoming financially easier for them and they are in their 30s (younger one is 30 this year). So it may just be 1 child each even if they didn't plan it that way like I did (I wanted an only child since I married 10 years ago as I could see the economic situation wasn't going to improve even if incomes increased).

I suspect a lot of people are in the same situation hence the birth rate. I think if childcare was free it would help but these young couples are struggling to get established. Even if you build more housing, people still need stable good jobs to pay for them.

@is30tooyoungformidlifecrisis I would but I had help to buy in London. I couldn't have done it without help and staying close to family meant I had physical help with my young dc which I think is really underestimated. As a result of that help I can still work p/t and my life is lower stress.

DH and I have been together 20 years and chose not to have kids. We've just never been bothered.

What would have made us do it?

I could probably have had my arm twisted and produced one child, if typical working hours and school hours were more in line. I just knew the hell that I'd be subjecting myself to with a 9-5.30 working day (which on office days means I leave at 7.30am and get back at 6pm), plus school holidays, whilst not living near our parents who could possibly help us out a bit. All of that running around - not to mention the expense of childcare and wrap around care. I've worked with so many women with careers and kids, I know how it goes.

For people who weren't bothered either way, it easily turned the decision into a hard 'no'.

Immigration isn't the answer as the world birth rate is declining.

I believe its actually the right thing to happen as the world cannot support an ever increasing population. We are going to have bumpy ride for a generation or two while things readjust, but it's probably better for everyone in the long term.

Both sets of parents in our family have had long and healthy retirements. My grandparents didn't and I don't expect to either, this is a luxury we just can't afford. Retirement was only designed to keep elderly people who couldn't work looked after, not to keep health people out of work.

There is no reason why our parents couldn't keep working even if it was part-time for a lot longer.

I expect to that's for sure.

Some poorer people already work until they die - often working class people who are in lower paid work such as carers and have poorer access to health services (harder to get to the GP when you're working anti social hours)

So your job means you care for wealthier individuals, putting up with their petty complaints (especially of their relatives who have chosen not to do the job themselves) pay tax, NI and pension towards your future as a retiree but actually you never make it to that age - but the richer people (like their children) do who have had easier working lives (or not worked at all)

We're not quite as bad as the US who have a 15 year difference in life expectancy between rich and poor, but there is significant inequality.

It's not fair and we need to make it fairer by sorting out inequality - starting by taxing wealth not work.

That's another element that's quite British, people seem to really hate children in public places! I was just talking to a European child-free friend about this, in (Western) Europe children seem to be more accepted in the community, it's normal to have them in public places, out for meals, the whole attitude is different.

But here in England, people seem to have shifted from 'children should be seen and not heard' to just 'children shouldn't be seen or heard, I don't want kids around when I'm having a nice meal/day out'. So then parents stick tablets in front of their kids to keep them quiet and then that leads to children not knowing how to behave in public and it all gets worse. I've worked very hard so far to teach my 2.5yo how to behave in public and she rarely ever causes inconvenience/noise for others, but I still often feel very judged and looked down on when I bring her out places. So then parents, especially women, just feel isolated and don't want to have more children

If you earn “too much” then your children won’t get a full student loan. You are expected to top up your child’s loan to at least the full amount.

Yes, it's means tested and the government expect parents to help.

Plus things like extracurriculars, I spend a fortune on these. Of course they are optional but I want my dc to have the opportunities.

The U.K. government has already seen the pensions issue and that’s why the pension age has been raised.

the pension is also a contributory benefit so you need to have NI contributions to receive it.

https://www.pensionbee.com/uk/state-pension-age-calculator#:~:text=When%20will%20I%20get%20my,will%20eventually%20increase%20to%2068.

people who are old and have never worked (or paid the married women’s stamp if they were old enough) are not entitled to it.

there’s other benefits if you are state pension age but not entitled to it.

Immigration isn't the answer as the world birth rate is declining.

Lots of countries will be fighting over young workers.
Portugal already has introduced incentives eg big tax breaks for young people.

thequeensburygroup.com/news/portugal-a-new-tax-haven-for-young-people

I’m at SAHM by choice as in I really didn’t want to put my ‘babies’ in childcare.

I’m bit of a unicorn as SAHM don’t exist anymore (unless the mum’s are quite young/never had a career to begin with).

I’ve always wanted to be a mum and if DH was a millionaire we’d probably have five kids. Due to some very unfortunate series of events we’re mortgage free which meant that we were able to start a family quite ‘young’ in our late twenties.

Instead of benefits it would be nice if we got more of a tax break. DH salary is paid into our joint account as obviously I have no income (except £25 child benefit…) However at the end of the year when ‘we’ do our taxes (he does some consultancy on the side) he gets taxed the same as if he was a bachelor, not an income supporting three.

@Octavia64 Pension credit has quite a lot of attached benefits and reductions but is means tested. (although owning your own home is not counted) so you can still be asset rich

As has been seen from the Winter fuel payment, the difference of living standards between state pension only (no extra private pension) and pension credit is quite small especially if you compare a state pension renting, with a pension credit home owning.

So for future taxpayers, it doesn't really make difference whether they are paying for state pension or for pension credit (and it's associated benefits) - its all money that has to be found from workers.

I’m at SAHM by choice as in I really didn’t want to put my ‘babies’ in childcare.

My dc are with a gp today & overnight. They both are going to camp next Monday. I'm off work but I genuinely need some days to myself regularly, it helps with my sanity. I think society expect a lot of mothers these days.

It's accepted that educating women in third world countries reduces the size of their families. So I suppose that means women are not relying on their offspring to care and provide for them in their old age, possibly they are providing for themselves, so have fewer children.

This is then extended in the present day to women having an interesting and busy life and children hinder that.

Too many old people. Sorry but that’s the problem. They give up work and then need state support for thirty years! It used to be five or ten. They also live in big houses and have plenty of money. I know that’s not all old people of course. But many I know live in huge houses and live very comfortably doing nothing for thirty years. Also using the nhs much more than anyone else

Well, you said that you disagreed with me and then went on to do exactly what I suggested - propose a new answer! However that "new answer" has been around since at least the 1970's because I can recall it being discussed then and it still hasn't happened. Why?

The reason is because your underlying economic system still operates in exactly the same way - the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer, the poor are growing in numbers, and the middle is being squeezed (mostly downwards) out of existence.

To have a Universal Basic Income when fewer production hours are involved in the process, you need a very fundamental shift in where profit goes. Unless you are genuinely trying to suggest that the likes of Gates and Bezos are going to voluntarily fund this from their vast reserves of cash? Right now there are mutiple posts on this site alone screaming that we should not tax the rich more, but can't afford benefits, and who still haven't explained where they are going to employ the unemployed / disabled or what they intend to pay them with. If we cannot afford benefits now, how do we afford a Universal Basic Income which is above the poverty line, without raking in £trillions more income to the coffers? £trillions that won't be raised from taxation on the new part-time working population, of whom there will be greater numbers because you said you also needed to increase the working age population to pay for things that we already appear to be unable to support. The answer is that we can't.

To achieve a universal basic income we must also fundamentally alter the entire economic sytem. Good luck with that. I'm definitely up for joining you on the barricades, come the revolution, but I hope there'll be more than me and thee there...

@H0LLOW It can be more than 30 years

State pension age in the 1980s was 60 for women, 65 for men - changed in 1995

so in if you retired in 1990 - a woman would now be 95, a man 100 (and there are plenty of people this old - In 2023, there were 611,719 people aged 90 and over in the UK, with women outnumbering men by a significant margin)

then you would have 30/35 years of paid retirement.

In reality many many people retired early of ill health - often in their 50s, so there are some individuals who have been retired for more years than they worked.

It's why I object to the 'they worked all their lives' rhetoric - they didn't

@PhilippaGeorgiou I'll be too old to man the barricades but I fully expect to experience the fury of the young when I am old and am thinking cultural revolution style change.

There's a lot that will annoy people because the benefits system helps or bankrolls so many people. That we have a declining birth rate is probably not a major thing to some as the world is over populated as it is. Those who chose not to have children shouldn't have to support those who do - so if you want children then be prepared for the fact that you will probably struggle at times to support them and be prepared to go without yourself to do so. Been there and done that!
The baby boomer generation is now some ten years into them starting to die off (and I'm am part of that generation) so this will be correcting itself and reducing the population and feeding into the profits of the funeral directors who will do very well from this.
It isn't right that our taxes go to support immigrants who are not genuine asylum seekers. My own mindset regarding that is - if something is so wrong in the country of your home birth - then you should be fighting to improve your country - not decamping to a country to live off their benefits when you have left the women and children of your country to face this without you. Cowardice or laziness?? depends how you look at it?
People say that things are too expensive now and that not enough is paid in wages - it's always been that way!! My parents were not wealthy and my dad was a seaman who spent months at a time away from his family while he served in his career choice. I married and had two children and times were hard for us then - especially as my husband was prone to walking out of jobs leaving me as the main breadwinner. My children have children of their own now and even they find things difficult - that's life - and shapes the resilience (or not in some cases) of each and every generation. The circumstances may be different in each generation but no one generation has it easier than any other.
The difference now is that the benefits system has ballooned to the point that we now have a nanny state and people who won't go without their Costa coffee, tattoos, football club annual ticket, holidays - insert anything of your choice!! and expecting the state and everyone to provide it without any input from them by getting a job and paying their way.