Surely the most momentous social change of our times began sometime in
the 1960s or '70s when parents decided their daughters were just as
entitled to an education as their sons. Girls embraced this opportunity
with such diligence that today they leave schools and universities
better educated than boys.
Fine. But this has required much change to
social and economic institutions, which we've found quite painful and is
far from complete. It's changed the way marriages and families operate -
changed even the demands made on grandparents - greatly increased
public and private spending on education, led to the rise of new classes
of education and childcare, changed professions and changed the
workplace.
It has led to greater "assortative mating", where
people are more likely to marry those not just of similar social
background, but of a similar level of education.
For centuries the
labour market was built around the needs of men. Changing it to
accommodate the needs of the child-bearing sex has met much resistance,
and we have a lot further to go. This is evident from last week's report
of the Human Rights Commission, which found much evidence to show
"discrimination towards pregnant employees and working parents remains a
widespread and systemic issue which inhibits the full and equal
participation of working parents, and in particular, women, in the
labour force".
You can see this from a largely social perspective -
accommodating the rising aspirations of women and ensuring they get
equal treatment - or, as is the custom in this more materialist age, you
can see it from an economic perspective.
By now we - the
taxpayer, parents and the young women themselves - have made a hugely
expensive investment in the education of women. It accounts for a little
over half our annual investment in education.
If we fail to make it
reasonably easy for women to use their education in the paid workforce,
we'll waste a lot of that money. Our neglect will cause us to be a lot
less prosperous than we could be.
Of late, economists are worried
our material standard of living will rise more slowly than we're used
to, partly because mineral export prices have fallen but also because,
with the ageing of the baby boomers, a smaller proportion of the
population will be working.
They see increased female
participation in the labour force - more women with paid work, more
working women with full-time jobs - as a big part of the answer to this
looming catastrophe (not).
But how? One way would be to impose more
requirements on employers, but in an era where the interests of business
are paramount, politicians are reluctant to do that. Make employers
provide childcare or paid parental leave? Unthinkable.
So, for the
most part, taxpayers have picked up the tab. Government funding of
childcare has reached about $7 billion a year, covering almost
two-thirds of the total cost. The cost of government-provided paid
parental leave is on top of that.
Governments' goals in childcare
have evolved over time. In the '70s and '80s, the focus was on
increasing the number of places provided. In the '90s, the focus shifted
to improving the affordability of care, with the introduction of,
first, the means-tested childcare benefit, and then the unmeans-tested
childcare rebate. Under the Howard government, the rebate covered 30 per
cent of net cost, but Labor increased it to 50 per cent.
More
recently, increased evidence of the impact of the early years of a
child's life on their future wellbeing has shifted governments'
objectives towards child development and higher-quality, more
educationally informed, childcare. This includes getting all children to
attend pre-school. Linked with this has been a push to raise the pay of
childcare workers.
The federal government asked the Productivity
Commission to inquire into childcare and early childhood learning. Last
week it produced a draft report. I suspect the pollies were hoping the
commission would find a way to reduce regulation of what they kept
calling the childcare "market"; thus improving workforce participation
and "flexibility" while achieving "fiscal sustainability".
If so,
they wouldn't have been pleased with the results. The main proposal was that the childcare benefit and rebate be combined into one, means-tested
subsidy payment paid direct to childcare providers.
This would
involve low-income families getting more help while high-income families
get less. There would be a small additional cost to the government, but
this could be covered by diverting money from Tony Abbott's proposed
changes to paid parental leave. It was "unclear" his changes would bring significant additional benefits to the community.
The commission wasn't able to
claim its proposals would do much to raise participation in the labour
force, mainly because our system of means-testing benefits - which works
well in keeping taxes low, something that seems to be this government's
overriding goal - means women face almost prohibitively high effective
tax rates as their incomes rise, particularly moving from part-time to
full-time jobs.
Like the Henry tax review before it, the commission
just threw up its hands at this problem. And even the commission couldn't
bring itself to propose major reductions in the quality of education and
care. Sorry, no easy answers on childcare.
