Family Policy, Socio-Economic Reproduction and Social Justice

Family Policy, Socio-Economic Reproduction and Social Justice Presented by: Prof. UAM Dr. Michalski Date: June 18 2024 Who will guess? How old is that...? - “(...) legal bulwarks of the total family system are adjusted to its weakest units. As a result, in our culture the parental unit has no real backing or workable public support in law. Parents must now try to rear a family under a social and legal system adjusted to those couples who do not want the paraphernalia of familism common income, expenses, children, union for perpetuity, or serious familistic obligations. In our modern Western society the forgotten person is the man or woman who honestly and sincerely wants to be a parent. This affects our whole social system; it affects all the practices of life, from renting a house to economic advancement under our different forms of bureaucracy. If there are children, renting a house is difficult, changing jobs is difficult, social activities are difficult” - Important aspect of our demographic problem is human capital deficit problem - T.W. Schultz, s. 297 • “Investments in human capital are based on the assumption that certain expenses (sacrifices) are made intentionally in order to create production reserves in the form of human individuals who will provide specific services in the future. These include production services, reflected in future earnings, and consumption services, reflected in lifelong satisfaction.” - In the meantime… • fundamental assumption (“DOGMA”) not formulated explicate in Social Sciences that PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS WANT and WILL HAVE CHILDREN is no longer VALID... Our Situation, Our Paradoxes, Our Contradictions - ECONOMY our position on the labor market depends on the quality of one's own human capital - SOCIETY we socialize Young generations to live/survive individually, to live alone...(?) - CULTURE: we award and adore individual achievements - Result: we create GENERATIONS OF SELF-SUFFICIENT SPECIALISTS ...which less and less often are willing to engage, share their time/life/wealth and give next generations a chance to appear… - - In this way... • We are CAUSING a crawling DEFICIT/CRISIS OF HUMAN CAPITAL • We create "ANTI-FAMILY" HUMAN CAPITAL... (Giza-Poleszczuk 2005:200). • "No discussion of human capital can ignore the influence of the family on children's knowledge, skills, values, and habits" (Becker 1993:21) • "The family supplies people to the market: it is the only and most important producer of human capital" Question: - Where is the error/problem? - 1. in the young generations..? - or - 2. in the system/culture we have created/we reproduce/justify - - which “shapes" and “trains" subsequent generations? An Attempt To Explain... - Are current demographic challenges a result of such design of SOCIAL (AND ECONOMIC) POLICY AND LEGAL FRAMEWORK, which results in an uneven burden and, as a result, an unfair distribution of responsibilities and resources? - Is the contribution of families having and raising children/creating human capital, as part of the contribution to prosperity and socio-economic development, proportionately greater, and is it adequately recognized and fairly compensated? Human capital as an effect of Social Policy - Social Policy defined as: • "(...) activities of public institutions aimed directly at people's well-being. In a broader sense, it includes, among others: such areas as education, health care, labor market or housing conditions, and more narrowly income and less often consumption" (Panek 2020, p. 437). Social Justice and Social Policy - "(...) the concept of justice itself is not popular among economists and is often relegated to "non-economic" areas of consideration (Pieńkowski 2013, p. 9, cf. Wilkin, 1997, p. 23). Social Justice and not Social Equality as the modus vivendi of society - "in a broad perspective in the social sciences (...) the vision is justice" (Ringen 2009, p. 175). - The general concept of JUSTICE according to Rawls vs. the "apotheosis" of Equality - "All social values freedom and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social basis of self-respect are to be distributed equally, unless the unequal distribution of any (or all) of these values is to the advantage of everyone" (Rawls 2009, p. 109). Social Policy And The Family Between Justice And Injustice 3 Theses - 1. Social policy must be considered in terms of justice and responsibility - 2. Demographic crisis present in many countries is (to some extent) the result of longterm social injustice construction of social policy e.g. pension systems based on the "dogma" of invariability of demographic trends, individualization of social life and social policy - equality replacing justice - 3. Social justice can't be reduced to „Wokeism", which happens these days SOCIAL INJUSTICE in the name of EQUALITY...? - The case of pension systems that did not differentiate benefits based on having children, who, upon entering adulthood and taking up paid work, contributed to the same budget from which ALL people of non-working age benefit; - Due to such solutions, parents - the vast majority of them women who, as a result of the decision to raise a larger number of children, were forced to limit or give up their professional work, receive low benefits or no benefits at all, when they reached retirement age. - - The demographic effect • Ignoring the link between raising children and future benefits, • Perpetuated injustice and awarded/supported individualistic perspective, • Thereby encouraging people to abandon marriage and parenthood. • PRIVATIZED COSTS and SOCIALIZED BENEFITS RESULT: • The system designed in this way rewards specific decisions/behaviors and well illustrates two concepts known in economics: • Free rider problem (Grossman, Oliver 1980) • Tragedy of the commons (Hardin 1968) Towards a fair and effective SOCIAL POLICY - Proposal to DISTINGUISH between SOCIAL ASSISTANCE and FAMILY POLICY in the context of human capital • (1) in the case of social assistance, it is about providing assistance in cases where the creation of human capital has stopped or is at risk (intervention) • (2) in the case of family policy, it is about support aimed at ensuring continuity and effectiveness, and possibly strengthening the process of generating human capital (prevention)