As Australia’s birthrate continues to tumble, debate about babies,
families and work has burst out from the behind the backyard fences of
Australian suburbs and into the political mainstream.
The declining birthrate – down from an average of 1.75 births to 1.73
in just twelve months – has become a de facto measure of the environment
for families.
In other words, the reason families and babies has become such a hot
topic is that the all the evidence shows that average Australian parents
are slowly sinking.
Advertisement
They are the ones who daily face the growing pressure of a market
economy that makes few concessions to workers who have children.
Too many now work in a 24/7 economy where babies and children are
viewed as lead in the saddlebags.
Now more than any time in our history our mothers and fathers are
feeling squeezed.
Why?
At an institutional level we are undercutting the concept of parenting.
Our tax, social security and industrial relations systems no longer
furnish parents with the two most important things they need in raising a
family – more time and enough money
Advertisement
Take the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling’s (NATSEM)
discovery that more than 800,000 Australian workers now face effective
marginal tax rates (EMTRs) of more than 60 per cent – a significant
increase since 1997.
Seventy-four per cent of those with high EMTRs come from the ranks of
Australia’s 3.2 million families who have children under the age of 16
years.
In layman’s terms this means that more Australian parents lose 60
cents or more out of each extra dollar they earn than they did five years
ago.
Discuss in our Forums
See what other readers are saying about this article!
Click here to read & post comments.