Being devil's advocate - should there be a cap on the number of children a family can claim benefit for?

[ReallyTired]

Flame throwers ready - play nicely everyone.

I feel uncomfortable about further cuts to the support that families already recieve. Young families have suffered enough. It would be interesting know how other developed countries help their young people.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31743031

There are plenty of people who think we don't have room for people fleeing for their lives from Islamic State. If Britain is full up then surely we should be discouraging people from having any lots of children. I think the labour policy of being more generous to families with child tax credits, pregnancy health grant, generous childcare subsidy has increased the birth rate. Maybe there is an arguement for discouraging people from having more children. I don't know. Many migrants are intelligent, hard working and frankly more of an asset to the country than many native born British people.

However capping child benefit combined with the loss of child tax credits will plunge families into poverty. Children have no choice in being born and should not be punished for the lack of responsiblity of their parents.
The child benefit/ child tax credit system is broke and does not help to allievate poverty.

We might have a relatively high birth rate within Europe, but compared with the rest of the world we don't.

Look at the map in this article. (telegraph)

link

Also worth noting 2nd generation birth rates for immigrants historically drop to reflect the national average depending on their level of educational and economic success.

I believe benefits are a safety net so say for example a sahm who's been left in the shit by her husband who was previously supporting her and the 4 dc should be able to claim for 4 children.

Or a family that's fallen on to hard times by being made redundant should be able to claim for however many dc they have.

Do I think you can stay on income support and pop out baby after baby. no I don't and two should be the limit you can claim for.

THe UK has one of the highest birth rates now in Europe, and the highest it has been here for many decades- thanks to the number of young immigrants giving birth.
Misleading, giving the impression that it's a huge amount of people.

Just over a quarter of births

A significant UK drop

Thanks for posting Dawndonna. I knew the ONS data was out there but was somewhat hampered by toddler with an urgent need of a Mr Man story.

I think it comes down to a couple of issues for me:

1. are they net tax payers? if someone has always paid their taxes, worked hard etc then find themselves in the shit through no fault of their own - redundancy, business goes under - then I wouldn't have a problem supporting any number of children. if they haven't been net tax payers and have no reason not to have been (ie not talking about people with a disability who are unable to work) then no, I wouldn't pay for them to carry on having kids.

1. I always get a bit wound up by the term "poverty" because it is completely and utterly relative. what we think of as poverty in the west in the 21st Century does not compare to poverty in other countries or at other times. there will always be poverty if you define poverty as the lowest 10% because there will always be a lowest 10%!!

1. in order to ensure that children don't suffer we have to have a complete re-think on benefits. we shouldn't be paying money to the mother or father to pass on to the child but should be ensuring that the money goes directly to the child. this could be in the form of free school meals and free other meals - we could set up food clubs where kids go for breakfast and tea so at least you know that they are being fed proper food. and before anyone screams "workhouse" "foodbank" I know its not perfect but the system we have at the moment isn't either.

1. I have lived on benefits. I am now self employed and make what I think is a reasonable living. my wages fall just inside the average wage band.

just think now is the time to get the whole benefits thing out in the open and look at it completely anew and not tinker at the edges. I would love to see less go to the person who is fit but cant be arsed to work and much more to those with disabilities.

Whilst our birth rate is below replacement, our population is still growing at the moment.

I'm really torn on this. I don't know anyone who would have children just for the money, but I do know people who have more because they can afford but only with help.

I think if the cap is only for children born after x date then on balance I support it. This would mean that someone who has more than 2 now could still make a new claim if something went wrong for whatever reason.

I don't think the argument about needing to be rich to have children applies because I think 2 is a fair go. I think we'll stop at 2 because I would worry about impact on finances and ability to provide for them in the future.

As for it being the children that miss out, well that's my main concern. I suspect that those that still go ahead may not have been using that money for children anyway. And I would support the savings, or some of them, being used for better childrens' support.

But it's a tough one.

It's interesting how people genuinely talk about schools being full up, baby booms and so on, when the reality is that we are actually not having enough babies amongst us to replace the population.

People have forgotten that we closed and/or merged loads of schools between 1997-2010, dramatically cutting back on school places, and also we closed lots of maternity units as well. So basically the problems now have come about because we flogged too many of the facilities and had not planned properly for peaks and troughs.

Also in rural areas, a lot of facilities are still closing and there is depopulation in some areas, not helped by the withdrawal of transport and public services there as well. So this is mainly an urban/metropolitan issue.

mummy how do you decide whether or not it's a case of a person not being arsed to work?

howabout A Mr. Man story quite reasonably, trumps everything!

I think I am confusing child benefit with child tax credits. What exactly is being capped and will it apply equally to men and women?

How would this affect adoption rates? Would it stop families with two children adopting two siblings? Would it stop someone adopting their nieces and nephews if their own sibling died, forcing the kids into the care system?

What about families who can afford their kids but one adult dies or becomes disabled?

No cap. And I only have two children with no plans for any more.

when the reality is that we are actually not having enough babies amongst us to replace the population.

That's presuming that replacing the population is a good thing. The UK population was boosted by the massive increase in the birth rate (or, more accurately, the massive increase in the rate of children surviving the first few years of life) in the twenty years following the second world war. Predictions made in the 1960s were for the UK population to be 100m by 2000, because the assumption was that the TFR, which had hit 2.9 by 1963, would continue to rise or at least remain stable. In fact it dropped like a stone from 1967 onwards, because of the legalisation of abortion, the ready availability of reliable contraception to unmarried women and the boomer generation not wanting to have children in the way their mothers had.

Bolograph, if you want a pension, then people need to keep breeding.

Its an interesting question and either way you either end up rewarding those who pop out children for benefits or you penalise those who have been left in vulnerable positions - no right answer really

It is so difficult. Me and DH have 3 kids. When I had each kid we planned them and could fully support them. Then my DH got ill, very ill. He is now registered disabled and I am a carer. Our income dive bombed overnight. Our savings vanished whilst we tried to survive while stuck in the "assessment" system for a year. Having benefits which discounted our third child would be the difference between us being comfortable (not rich, can't afford holidays etc but can afford food, essentials and a few odd luxuries like occasional takeaways, a mobile and basic sky tv) and us being borderline poverty.

Not everyone on benefits with more than 2 kids chose to be in this situation.

Agree Bolograph; I don't agree with the "we have to have more babies to support the pensioners who will then need more babies to support them in their old age who will then need more babies to support them in their old age"....and on and on we go.

At some time soon the world will be an overpopulated mess, with no resources, needing a bloody great virus so wipe out half the population so it can all start again.

Bolograph, if you want a pension, then people need to keep breeding

See, I know this is how it works now but long long term, do we just need to keep increasing the population to support the pensions of he generations above? Presumably yes, but when does this stop being sustainable?

You might also want some younger people to run your hospitals, infrastructure, supermarket etc in your old age as well as having them pay in to support pension payments.

Bolograph, if you want a pension, then people need to keep breeding.

That presumes that births are fungible. They aren't. If (for the sake of argument) the birth rate were heavily slanted towards the multi-generational poor then those additional births are doing nothing to fund my pension unless that cycle of deprivation is broken. My state pension relies on a given level of tax take, and could be funded in a variety of other ways including increases in productivity, the raising of the pensionable age, increases in national insurance contributions, etc, etc, etc.

And anyway, that argument only applies, even partially, to state pensions, which are paid from tax revenue. For anything based off a pension fund it's a lot more complex than that, and relies on the economic stability of the assets that are used to invest for my eventual pension. It's a hell of a reach to say that population growth of itself increases a country's per capita GDP or even its GDP full stop.

You might also want some younger people to run your hospitals, infrastructure, supermarket etc in your old age

And your evidence for the number required to do that being exactly the current population level is...?

So what would happen if everyone stopped having children immediately? Economic boom?

Or would we see an initial jump in GDP followed by a crash a generation later?

In theory yes there should be a cap.

But real life isn't so black and white. What about abusive relationships, women can be trapped into having babies, how will they ever leave? What about widows? What about men who run off with other women? Also does the cap only apply to resident parents? Is it fair that none resident parents can start new families and claim benefits?

'So what would happen if everyone stopped having children immediately?'

Immigration would become a necessity. Which is fine because there are loads of people who want to come and live here.

The global population is rising and rising. There are enough young people to go round even if we don't produce any home-grown ones. We're living more and more in a global community so it's a bit shortsighted to look only at our population levels.

In fact it would probably be a good thing (for the economy) if we could take in loads of young adults. They'll work and contribute, but we haven't had to pay to educate them etc.

It's interesting to look at how other countries deal with this issue. Here in France the government are very keen on paying people to have French babies - your family benefits rise steeply after your third child. The whole tax and benefits is designed to favour families - France has a reputation as a high tax country but for for someone in my situation, on a decent salary with 2 kids and a DH earning much less, tax rates are considerably lower than in the UK. However, I'd pay a lot of tax if I were a single person on my current salary.

Anyway ... I think that policies which inadvertently provide an incentive for anti-social behaviour are not good policies, and we shouldn't encourage a minority of poorly educated people to keep producing babies because it's all they know how to do.

The answer isn't to punish their children though - the answer is education and more equality of income. Birth rates are generally inversely correlated with education levels and wealth (although interestingly, in the UK, both very poor and very rich women have more children).

If you want to withdraw support from third and subsequent children then intellectual honesty requires you to be in favour either of child poverty, or of abortion.