The baby penalty is too high

Sophie van Gool

The baby penalty is too high
Dec 10, '23 12:00

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Fewer and fewer children are being born in the Netherlands, reports the CBS. At 1.49 children per woman, the birth rate has never been lower. Good news for the climate: each child who is not born saves 58.6 tons of CO2 per year.

But if no one has more children, there is also a problem. Who has to pay the AOW pension? Who will care for the growing number of elderly people? And who will soon have to design and install solar panels?

Population growth concerns us all. Look at South Korea, which has the world's lowest birth rate (0.81). The population has been shrinking for a few years. Cities are disappearing, kindergartens are being converted into care homes, and midwifery practices are making way for funeral homes.

Although we collectively benefit from children (human capital!) the costs are largely for the individual. Or more precisely: for the mother. The baby penalty is the effect that having children has on your income. In the Netherlands, the average fine for women is 46%. For men? Zero. There are even studies that indicate a positive effect for men ('the fatherhood bonus'). In the eyes of employers, father means “breadwinner” and that equals “important” and “responsible”. Of course, he needs a higher salary to provide for his family.

'The baby penalty is the effect that having children has on your income. In the Netherlands, the fine is on average 46% for women and zero for men. '
The birth rate fluctuates with confidence in the future. The CBS also points to uncertain times and a difficult housing market. But maybe there is more to it. In the past, the birth rate was related to a country's income (the higher, the fewer children) and women's employment rate (idem). In the last two decades, that has not been the case, researchers see.

A decisive factor now is whether women are able to properly combine a career and children. If this is the case, women will have children and will continue to work. If you force women to choose between a career or family, there will be fewer children and fewer women will work.

If you want to keep the birth rate and the employment rate high, you should therefore support mothers more, and thus share the baby penalty fairly. To do this, the researchers point to four factors: public childcare and paid leave, favourable social standards for working mothers, flexibility of the labour market and, above all, a greater contribution from fathers.

We recently saw an illustration of these scientific findings in the FD. The reporters asked the 36-year-old managing partner of a Zuidas office how he could reconcile his family with his job. “My wife works for three days, that makes it possible,” the CEO confessed.

Even in young families, the baby penalty still lands far too often in the old place.

Sophie van Gool is an economist and founder of Salaristijger.

Read the full article: https://fd.nl/opinie/1499394/de-babyboete-is-te-hoog