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EXCERPTS
Getting more mothers into paid work is a key to paying for our growing numbers of old people, according to a keynote speaker at a Government-sponsored social policy conference.
Professor Joakim Palme, director of Sweden's Institute of Futures Studies and son of assassinated Prime Minister Olof Palme, told the Wellington conference that the welfare state would survive the ageing of society and globalisation only if it encouraged more people - especially mothers - to become taxpayers.
"We have this new trend of women doing well in education, and we have a need to increase the tax base for the welfare system," he said.
"Sometimes the costs of Scandinavian welfare states are exaggerated - Denmark is not spending more than the United Kingdom, and Sweden is not spending more than France or Germany, because we have a larger proportion of the population that are taxpayers."
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The state actively encouraged mothers back to work through paid parental leave of 15 months, of which at least two months must be taken by the father, and through massively subsidised childcare, limited to a maximum fee of 1000 Swedish kroner ($200) a month.
"It's a guarantee - municipalities have to provide families with children with childcare from the age of 18 months," Dr Palme said.
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"A Danish sociologist has looked at the effect of social class on educational outcomes and found that the impact of the father's social class disappears for the youngest children with the expansion of early childhood education and reduced child poverty."
- reprinted from the New Zealand Herald