FAMILY ENDOWMENT
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—The fact that the population of this country is now failing to reproduce itself—as has been demonstrated in your recent series of articles on Population—has at least removed one of the few serious arguments against a scheme of family allowances. Perhaps family allowances would in themselves do little to increase the size of the family, although they probably constitute a necessary part of any complete social policy designed to raise fertility ; but in any case the present trend of population completely removes the danger that family allowances would cause overpopulation. May I take this opportunity to stress the fact that there are other arguments of the greatest importance in favour of family endowment ?
A scheme of family endowment involves a redistribution of the national income in favour of those with dependent children ; and this will increase the sum total of human welfare, since income means more to those with large than to those with small needs. Mr. Colin Clark has estimated in his National Income and Outlay that while only 13.7 per cent. of the population live in families with incomes under 10s. per head per week, yet 25.3 per cent. of the children in the country under 14 are to be found in these families, which shows how closely poverty is associated with large family needs.
It is possible to give many particular examples of this general argument for family endowment. Sir John Orr has shown that malnutrition due to deficient diet is mainly an effect of deficient income per head of the family. Bad housing conditions are very frequently due to the fact that the large families, which need most house room, can spare least from the family income for a rent that covers the cost of an adequate house. One of the main difficulties in raising the school-leaving age to 15 without undesirable exemptions is the hardship that would be imposed, in the absence of maintenance allowances, on the poor families who had to face an extra year in which the child is not permitted to earn. The chief obstacle to the abolition of the unpopular and inquisitorial family means test for unemployment assist- ance is that, if the same standard rate of relief is to be paid to each unemployed man without distinction of the family conditions, the payment must—in the absence of independent family endowmentbe sufficient to maintain the largest family and will, therefore, involve prohibitive and wasteful expense. These specific problems can in each case be met by ad hoc tests of the needs and income of each family and by granting maintenance allowances or rent rebates or adjusting
relief to needs under special educational, housing, nutritional or unemployment assistance services. But with how much greater ease and with how much less vexatious and costly inquisition might these problems be solved, if every parent in the country received automatically a certain sum of money each week in respect of each child under 15.
The social advantages of family allowances are over- whelming ; from the point of view of the population there is at the worst nothing to be said against them. The only obstacle is the problem of their finance. At the census of 1931 there were 10,825,000 children under 15 in Great Britain. To pay 5s. a week—a small sum for a first experiment--in respect of each of these children would cost some £141,000,000 per annum. This is a considerable sum ; and although some direct economies might be made possible in (e.g.) the abolition of allowances for children under the Unemployment Insurance
scheme or in diminishing housing subsidies, it would involve a large problem in public finance. But I suggest that the financing of some such scheme is the most pressing problem of social reform which we have now to face.—Yours faithfully,
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