Family Allowances

Abstract

THE question of family allowances is discussed by a recent broadsheet issued by Political and Economic Planning (PEP), and in a new pamphlet by Miss E. F. Rathbone, “The Case for the Immediate Introduction of a System of Family Allowances and Alternative Proposals for such a System”, issued by the Family Endowment Society, 72 Horseferry Road, London, S.W.I. The broadsheet points out that family allowances have become a live issue to-day for three main reasons: the need to restrict civilian consumption while safeguarding basic standards of health and nutrition; the claim for ‘equal pay for equal work’ which may arise sharply in the munitions industry if large-scale replacement of male by female labour occurs; and the need, intensified by new types of war-time distress and the multiplication of assistance scales, for codification of the numerous regulations. To relate income to the extent of family responsibilities is the only way of preventing the general reduction of consumption, however effected, pressing unfairly on large nurobers of children. Wages are not only a payment for work done but also the means for rearing and maintaining ar family, and all agencies by which consuming power is diverted from the social pool for the benefit of dependent wives or children are, in fact, agencies for family endowment. Miss Rathbone contends that family allowances offer the best means of meeting unavoidable increases in living costs simultaneously for workers in all occupations with similar family needs, without stimulating a race between prices and wages.