Introduction

We concluded in an earlier study that child and family benefits increased dramatically immediately following World War Two but have not done well in comparison with other social benefits since the 1950s (Kamerman and Kahn, 1997a). Although they continued to grow in real terms, they declined as a portion of overall social expenditures. Moreover, child or family allowances declined as a share of gross wages over time in most countries and as a portion of disposable family income as well. The turning point in public expenditure investment in children was the 1960s, when pension and health benefits expanded and related expenditures began to rise dramatically both as a portion of GDP and as a share of social expenditures. This pattern continued over the next 30 years, while child and family benefits fell further behind. Child and family benefits were not routinely adjusted to reflect rises in the cost of living, while pensions were increasingly linked to wages and often to prices as well, both of which rose significantly in most countries during the intervening years. Nor were they automatically adjusted to reflect rising costs, as was the case with health benefits.

However, despite the generally limited impact of family benefits in reducing poverty, those countries that did put together a diversified and generous package of such benefits (family or child allowances, housing allowances, advanced maintenance benefits, maternity/parenting benefits) were able to reduce child poverty and raise family income. Clearly, to ensure a satisfactory standard of living required jobs and adequate wages, but jobs alone were not necessarily sufficient for assuring an adequate income standard. For many, family-related cash benefits and services were a critical supplement to earnings.

Our final conclusion was that much of the variance in family benefits and services across countries was accounted for by political choice: “countries decide what they want to do and either find the political will to do it or decide that the political effort would be excessive. If the new and growing needs of children and their families in industrialised countries are to be met, this issue of political choice must be underscored … and … must be effectively addressed so that political effort may be transformed into political will” (Kamerman and Kahn, 1997a, p 121).