Abstract
Recently Paul Demeny proposed a policy to solve the problem of below-replacement fertility. His proposal is to link the old age economic security of parents to their fertility behaviour, strengthening the material position of those aged persons who have carried the financial burden of childraising by assigning some proportion of the social security contributions of children directly to their parents. I argue that in the course of constructing his proposal, Demeny undermines the fertility-facilitating effect of conventional welfare policies and ignores the class-specific effects of existing pronatalist policies. I suggest that the adoption of additional welfare policies, apart from strengthening and correcting existing measures, would not only foster the achievement and maintenance of a socially adequate fertility level but also foster social justice for the individuals more directly involved in generational reproduction.
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I am indebted to Geoffrey McNicoll, John Caldwell and Gavin Jones for their incisive comments on earlier versions of this note. It has also benefited from the comments of my colleagues and two anonymous referees of this Journal.
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Dharmalingam, A. Re-linking fertility behaviour and old age economic security: A delayed note on demeny. Journal of Population Research 8, 23–32 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03029553
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03029553