Subsidies for large families in Sweden impair integration of immigrants Jan 4, 2022, The Overpopulation Project The family supplement, which gives extra financial aid for each additional child, was implemented in Sweden in 1982 at a time of falling birth rates. It now contributes to lock-in effects for immigrant women. Abolishing this supplement and limiting the child allowance to the first two kids would help reduce social exclusion and public spending, at the same time benefitting the environment, as argued in this Op-Ed translated from the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet.
By Andersson, Andersson, Deinum, & Gotmark
The new Swedish PM Magdalena Andersson wants to ?leave no stone unturned? when it comes to reducing Sweden?s increasing social exclusion, a necessary effort if Sweden is to survive as a welfare state in the long run.
Proposals with this purpose in recent years have included more community youth recreation centres, more money for schools in socioeconomically vulnerable areas, increased police presence, and so on. These proposals all increase public spending, and Magdalena Andersson, as former Minister of Finance, declared that the rich in Sweden can contribute more. But the opportunities to raise taxes are limited since the tax burden in the country is already high.
Our proposal, which in the long run is expected to reduce social exclusion and public expenditure as well as to benefit the environment, is to abolish subsidies for larger families and provide a max of two child allowances per family, so as not to encourage having a large number of kids.
A large proportion (approx 25%) of Sweden?s current population has in recent decades immigrated to Sweden, or are children of immigrants. Many come from countries with unsustainable, explosive population growth, including Afghanistan, Somalia, & Syria, where the populations have doubled approx every 25 years.
If these families retain a tradition of large cohorts of kids, the risk of social exclusion increases, partly because women?s opportunity to enter gainful employment decreases. Furthermore, it's difficult for society to provide social services and good schools in areas with large groups of kids and many inhabitants who do not speak Swedish. There's also a strong connection between large numbers of kids per family and areas with gang criminality, something that Lasse Wierup addressed in his book ?Gangsterparadiset.?
Upon their first contact with Swedish society, with tax-free child allowances and progressively larger family supplements (see Appendix below), some migrants conclude that in Sweden it's beneficial to have as many kids as possible. The extra supplement to families with two or more kids was introduced in
1982 in a completely different context, falling birth rates, but now leads to lock-in effects for a large number of immigrant women.A common view has been that rapid population growth decreases due to increased prosperity, but the connection is probably the opposite: reduced family size leading to increased prosperity through a so-called ?demographic dividend.? The increase in wealth that one generation creates can then be passed on to the next generation.
Sweden has made this journey, from a poor country with large family sizes in the early 20th c., to today?s welfare country with small cohorts of kids and, until recently, very good schooling. Let it not become a lost paradise with widening socioeconomic gaps and all the problems that social exclusion causes. We therefore propose a community contract, where each family with kids receives up to two child allowances, while we (the community) ?leave no stone unturned? to offer safe upbringing and good, free school education.
Each family can decide for itself whether it wants to have more than two kids but without additional monetary contributions from society. With two kids per family on average, we can obtain a relatively stable population size, which benefits welfare.
Zero population growth, or even better population reduction, is also required to counteract the loss of habitats for animals and plants, and to halt global warming. The relatively rapid population growth in Sweden in recent decades, compared to many other EU countries, drives intensive construction of buildings and infrastructure around the country, which eats up not only green areas in and near cities, but also agricultural land.
There's no reason to reward population growth, neither in Sweden nor elsewhere in the world.
Leif Andersson, professor of biology, Uppsala Malte Andersson, professor emeritus of ecology, Gothenburg Johanna Deinum, asst prof in biophysical chemistry, Gothenburg Frank Gotmark, professor of ecology, Gothenburg