The Ministry of Social Policy and Youth published a report on the consultation conducted with the interested public on Draft Proposal for the Act on Amendments to the Act on Maternity and Parental Benefits, which proposes an increase in the one-time financial support for a newborn (from Article 41 of this law) to 225% of the budget base.
Below we present our comment, which was not accepted, and you can read the ministry's explanation in I will report..
Regarding the proposal to increase the one-time financial support for a newborn child, or Article 2, we have several comments.
We believe that the urgent adoption of this law is not justified. Namely, despite the fact that demographic development should be one of the priorities of the Republic of Croatia, we believe that the urgent implementation of this specific measure would have no effect on "creating a more favorable environment and financial conditions for families with newborn children" in such a short period of time, primarily because the draft law is not based on research and/or analyses that would demonstrate its (long-term) effectiveness and efficiency. In addition, it is clearly evident from the media reactions over the past few months that the experts, as well as the general public, did not assess this measure as particularly relevant. Finally, it is evident from Annex 4 that in the preparatory phase of the Draft Proposal, no informal consultations were conducted with any stakeholder, which we consider a serious omission. As stated in Recommendation (2006) 19 of the Council of Europe, "services must be ... based on research into needs and effects, as well as the result of the involvement of all participants in the process of their adoption, primarily children and their parents".
Furthermore, since the aforementioned normative solution "needs to secure additional financial resources" (HRK 201,964,032.80 per year), the Proposal states that they will be secured "at the positions of the Ministry of Social Policy and Youth". We believe that the source of the necessary funds for the implementation of the law is not sufficiently elaborated or transparent. We would also like to point out that Minister Bernardica Juretić announced a "fairer distribution" of funds in her media appearances, but this is not mentioned in the proposal, which means that the support still applies to all Beneficiaries from Article 7 of the Law. According to professional literature, one of the main goals of family policy is to reduce poverty and maintain a certain level of income, with special care being taken of families with a poorer financial status in order to ultimately prevent child poverty. The Proposal for the Law in its current form provides for an equal amount of support for all families, therefore we propose that the possibility of granting support according to means testing be introduced into the public debate.
As demographer Anđelko Akrap pointed out, a one-time payment will not solve much, because a whole package of measures is needed to improve the demographic picture; for example, "it is necessary to improve the position of employed women, to provide mothers of small children with flexible and reduced working hours, as the Netherlands has, and Scandinavian countries also positively discriminate against mothers raising children. In addition, interest rates on housing loans should be subsidized for young families." (Večernji list, 10.10.2015.). Consequently, we believe that the proposed measure by itself will not have a relevant impact on the context described in the assessment of the situation, but rather needs to be coordinated with a number of other measures.
A one-time financial support, amounting to 70% or 225% of the budget base, will not encourage women to have children. This is confirmed, for example, by the number of one-time financial supports for newborns granted by cities and municipalities, so in the City of Zagreb, which provides an extremely high support for the 3rd and each subsequent child (54,000 kuna), only 1,213 applications were submitted in 2014, while the total number of newborns was 8,452. Similarly, in the municipality of Bol, which grants parents 60,000 kuna for each fourth child, 90,000 kuna for each fifth child, and as much as 120,000 kuna for each sixth child, in the last ten years, while this decision has been in force, no family has had more than three children. Therefore, we believe that, related to the "consequences that will result from the adoption of the law", it is unjustified to expect an "increase in the overall quality of life and standard" of the beneficiaries of this support based solely on the increase of one-time support.
We also believe that pro-natality policy should not be focused only on the birth of a new child. As stated in the professional literature, some of the main goals of family policy are also the promotion of employment and the reconciliation of work and family life, and support for the development of children at an early age, i.e. inclusion in formal care and preschool education. The data show that as many as 51% parents consider preschool programs to be moderately or poorly affordable and that the average coverage of kindergartens in the Republic of Croatia is 63%, while in some counties it is lower than 20%. In addition, in 31.3% families with children aged three and in 26.1% families with children aged six, only the father had a paid job in the last three months, while in 6% and 7% families it was exclusively the mother. Of particular concern is the fact that in 8% and 9% families, neither parent had a paid job in the three months preceding the survey (Dobrotić, 2013). Therefore, in families where neither parent works, who therefore do not have priority when enrolling their child in kindergarten, and who are entitled to a very low maternity benefit due to unemployment (50% of the budget base), a one-time assistance – even in the proposed amount of 2,250.00 kuna – cannot represent a long-term and sustainable solution for ensuring the well-being of the family.
With this in mind, instead of the proposed measure, we propose that the encouragement of demographic renewal be approached in a systematic and research-based manner – from, for example, guaranteeing every parent the right to (affordable) placement of their child in a pedagogically high-quality form of childcare; to raising the level of salary compensation during parental leave; to more actively promoting the use of parental leave by fathers (or considering introducing special quotas for fathers); to enabling free transportation for students and scholarships for students, and so on.
The comment was created as part of the project Women in the labor market - gender impact assessment, funded by the European Union.
