The Stork has Changed Flight Plans
Our region has had a problem with the birth rate for around thirty years. From around fourteen percent at the end of the seventies, it's gone down to around seven percent. Ever since birth control was legalized, people have been deciding how many children to have according to their beliefs and economic panoramas. Many young people have also emigrated, to other parts of Spain or abroad. One room schoolhouses that used to impart learning to over fifty kids, have been closed because there are less than five children in their circumscription. In fact, Spain as a country has a problem. For the first time, this year there have been more deaths than births.
The government has tried to put patches on a real problem. From spending money on billboards exhorting women to contribute to the population, to little measures that aren't enough on their own. Or that have five truckloads of red tape. The latest from the Galician Consellería de Política Social is a credit card with a hundred monthly euros to be spent on diapers, medicine, and baby food. As long as the family's income per capita is 13,500 euros a year, with a maximum of 67,500 for the entire family, each newborn will be regaled with that credit card for a year. The downside is that that's it. As if the government thinks that the first year is the only year a family is expected to spend extra money on a child. As if during the second and third years diapers are still not to be bought, the child never gets sick, or the toddler will start eating steak and potatoes like another one of the family. Another problem is that you will have to keep and present every receipt of every purchase made with that card. If you don't, you may get a fine and be obliged to return all the money from the entire year, 1,200 euros. How many papers are we to be forced to keep as a society in the era of online data?
But, Señor Conselleiro, the first year of a new baby is not the only expensive part of having a child. As the child grows, it will need clothes. If it grows well, you may have to buy five pairs of shoes in a year. They cost the same as a pair that I may wear for two seasons. Toddler clothes, despite the smaller use of fabric, and the greater need for replacement, costs the same as adult clothing that we may use for a couple of years. They still need special milk and cereal until their third year. As they grow their appetite grows. A box of baby cereal that costs as much as a box of adult cereal will last only two or three days. When a child begins school at three years of age, parents need to buy what are really glorified coloring books that are about as expensive as a third-grader's textbooks. And you, Señor Conselleiro, may have offered help in paying for textbooks, but you have made the roundabout way of asking for your money (ours, really) so time-consuming, that I assume you are hoping most families will desist from the headache and simply pay for everything themselves.
And those expenses continue beyond babyhood into adulthood. So many who finish their formal education cannot find jobs and are living with their parents. Or have found jobs that give them little more than pocket money, and so are forced to remain with their parents. You want to raise the birth rate, Señor Conselleiro? Then arrange it so that parents can find a stable job with which to feed themselves and their family, and keep a roof over their heads. Make it so that a newly-married couple can find the financial security and adjusted work hours to choose to start a family. Then, you can add government incentives such as this new credit card. But, support the family's decision to grow by giving them incentives until the children are eighteen, like in other European countries. Until that happens, Spain will continue to lose population.
The government has tried to put patches on a real problem. From spending money on billboards exhorting women to contribute to the population, to little measures that aren't enough on their own. Or that have five truckloads of red tape. The latest from the Galician Consellería de Política Social is a credit card with a hundred monthly euros to be spent on diapers, medicine, and baby food. As long as the family's income per capita is 13,500 euros a year, with a maximum of 67,500 for the entire family, each newborn will be regaled with that credit card for a year. The downside is that that's it. As if the government thinks that the first year is the only year a family is expected to spend extra money on a child. As if during the second and third years diapers are still not to be bought, the child never gets sick, or the toddler will start eating steak and potatoes like another one of the family. Another problem is that you will have to keep and present every receipt of every purchase made with that card. If you don't, you may get a fine and be obliged to return all the money from the entire year, 1,200 euros. How many papers are we to be forced to keep as a society in the era of online data?
But, Señor Conselleiro, the first year of a new baby is not the only expensive part of having a child. As the child grows, it will need clothes. If it grows well, you may have to buy five pairs of shoes in a year. They cost the same as a pair that I may wear for two seasons. Toddler clothes, despite the smaller use of fabric, and the greater need for replacement, costs the same as adult clothing that we may use for a couple of years. They still need special milk and cereal until their third year. As they grow their appetite grows. A box of baby cereal that costs as much as a box of adult cereal will last only two or three days. When a child begins school at three years of age, parents need to buy what are really glorified coloring books that are about as expensive as a third-grader's textbooks. And you, Señor Conselleiro, may have offered help in paying for textbooks, but you have made the roundabout way of asking for your money (ours, really) so time-consuming, that I assume you are hoping most families will desist from the headache and simply pay for everything themselves.
And those expenses continue beyond babyhood into adulthood. So many who finish their formal education cannot find jobs and are living with their parents. Or have found jobs that give them little more than pocket money, and so are forced to remain with their parents. You want to raise the birth rate, Señor Conselleiro? Then arrange it so that parents can find a stable job with which to feed themselves and their family, and keep a roof over their heads. Make it so that a newly-married couple can find the financial security and adjusted work hours to choose to start a family. Then, you can add government incentives such as this new credit card. But, support the family's decision to grow by giving them incentives until the children are eighteen, like in other European countries. Until that happens, Spain will continue to lose population.
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