Children as Public Goods?

Motive für das zweite Kind. Eine qualitative Sekundäranalyse problemzentrierter Interviews

“…Die Suche nach Motiven, die mit dem Wunsch nach einem zweiten Kind verbunden sind, darf insofern nicht mit der Suche nach "Funktionen" der Kinder verwechselt werden. Es wird nicht ex ante davon ausgegangen, dass die Identifikation positiver Externalien auf gesellschaftlicher Ebene (Olsaretti 2013) oder Akteursebene (Hoffman/Hoffman 1973: 46) eine hinreichende Erklärung ihres Entstehens darstellt. Orientiert an der Schütz'schen Darstellung wird stattdessen auf Um-Zu-Motive und Weil-Motive gezielt (Schütz 1971: 80-83).…”

A Philosophical Examination of Social Justice and Child Poverty

“…Most children will become taxpayers, support the older generations and therefore create a general benefit for the society in question. This again makes it reasonable that those benefiting from the fact that there are enough children in their society (independent from other relationships they have to them) have duties to secure adequate conditions for their upbringing (Olsaretti 2013). But for the purposes of this chapter, where responsibilities towards children in poverty are the focus, we see only limited use for this line of reasoning, first and foremost for two reasons.…”

“…The debate we have in mind addresses whether there is a responsibility among all adult members of a society (parents and nonparents alike) to share the costs arising from having children and parenting (George 1987;Vallentyne 2002;Casal and Williams 2004;Olsaretti 2013). This issue is a matter of controversy in the literature, but there seems to be a good argument in favor of the pro-sharing argument in terms of the contributions children make, on average and in the long run, to the welfare of a society.…”

Fertility, Union Wage Setting and Social Security System

“…Secondly, SSS are composed of pension, child allowances and unemployment insurance aiming to address problems of fertility and unemployment. Taking into account the demographic features, the social security system involves pension and child allowances: when progeny is looked upon as a consumption good, child allowances can be used to reduce the costs of childrearing (Barro & Becker, 1988;Galor & Weil, 1996); when child is treated as a capital good, sufficient pension benefits in old age will attenuate the function of offspring, which abates the incentive to rear children (Cigno, 1993); since the more children, the more tax payers of PAYG-basis transfer, children are often regarded as a public capital good, by which governments encourage higher fertility (Folbre, 1994;Van Groezen et al, 2003) (Note 5). Moreover, unemployment insurance is incorporated to ensure the lives of the unemployed.…”