At $100k per child, it would effectively open up "babymaker" as a career. US median household income is ~$75k, so a family doing nothing but having a baby every 16 months would average out to median household income.
I assume that's not great, but it might be better than working the late shift at Taco Bell for the rest of someone's life.
I'm conflicted on this. On one hand, it could be a solution to low birth rates.
On the other hand, it toes a very fine line on sexism.
It's a pretty bad image for women that we're willing to pay them more to reproduce than most other things. A woman having a baby every 12 months makes 30% more than the median household income. There are economic justifications, but it's a bad look.
While it's nominally a voluntary process, it can be viewed through a lens where we as a society make being poor awful (or fail to make being poor bearable) and the only reliable escape we offer is reproducing, casting doubts on how voluntary participation really is. If a woman is going to get evicted and the only means she can find to get out of that is having a baby, is her participation really voluntary?
I also don't know whether we should financialize having children. That may lead to a very different and less optimal kind of parenting.
The last I've found is disparate impact on genders. I generally get that the benefits are for the child, but $100k is enough that I think it could create dramatically disparate outcomes. We'd practically be offering a down payment on a house, or a way to avoid bankruptcy, or seed funding for a startup, but only to women. Straight men would need to couple with a woman to qualify, gay men wouldn't be able to qualify at all.
That may not apply if this program applies to adoptions too, as it probably should.
I assume that's not great, but it might be better than working the late shift at Taco Bell for the rest of someone's life.
I'm conflicted on this. On one hand, it could be a solution to low birth rates.
On the other hand, it toes a very fine line on sexism.
It's a pretty bad image for women that we're willing to pay them more to reproduce than most other things. A woman having a baby every 12 months makes 30% more than the median household income. There are economic justifications, but it's a bad look.
While it's nominally a voluntary process, it can be viewed through a lens where we as a society make being poor awful (or fail to make being poor bearable) and the only reliable escape we offer is reproducing, casting doubts on how voluntary participation really is. If a woman is going to get evicted and the only means she can find to get out of that is having a baby, is her participation really voluntary?
I also don't know whether we should financialize having children. That may lead to a very different and less optimal kind of parenting.
The last I've found is disparate impact on genders. I generally get that the benefits are for the child, but $100k is enough that I think it could create dramatically disparate outcomes. We'd practically be offering a down payment on a house, or a way to avoid bankruptcy, or seed funding for a startup, but only to women. Straight men would need to couple with a woman to qualify, gay men wouldn't be able to qualify at all.
That may not apply if this program applies to adoptions too, as it probably should.