These five reasons speak against abolishing parental allowance

Union and SPD Negotiate How exactly you want to lead the country. But it is already clear: You have to save. And some ideas about how that could be done. One of them: delete parental allowance. This discussion, the economist and head of the IFO Institute, has an upset Clemens Fuest. He said in an interview with the Welt am Sonntag: « I would completely abolish the parental allowance. It is a classic case of Nice-to-Have, but not priority ».

Now the decision as to which projects are « priority » is a rather subjective. Let’s look at the debate from a different direction and ask: What has the parental allowance brought so far?

Because it is clear, the parental allowance is expensive. In the budget of the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, it makes up the largest post. Almost 7.8 billion euros are planned for this in the current year alone. But: the sum drops. Firstly, because the traffic light has already shortened. From April 1, 2025, only parents will receive the performance, whose annual income is less than 175,000 euros. In addition, fewer children are born. This also reduces the circle of those who receive parental allowance. And thirdly, less fathers used parental allowance last year than in previous years. The latter is not in the sense of the invention. If you see the high costs as a minus point in the parental allowance balance, there is still a lot on the habit side.

From the beginning, the parental allowance was not a pure social benefit such as citizens’ or housing benefit. It has a second goal: the (economic) equality of men and women. And several studies come to the conclusion that this works – with restrictions. For example, the proportion of mothers with children under the age of three, the work, has increased significantly. In 2008, one year after the introduction of parental allowance, it was 46 percent. In 2022 it was 62 percent.

A second advantage: that fathers take professional breaks is now significantly more accepted than 18 years ago. Studies also show that the fathers who receive parental allowance for longer than mandatory two partner months are significantly more participating in children’s education and in the household. The unpaid work is still unevenly distributed: women turn around 30 hours a week for household and children, men 21 hours. But fathers with longer parental leave do better. This shows: the parental allowance works.

Before voices become loud, they say: do we cost us the sense of equality almost eight billion a year? The economic equality of men and women is not only anchored in the Basic Law, it also brings real advantages for the economy and the welfare state. Due to the retirement of the Babyboomer pension, the skilled skills in the country grows, a obstacle to economic growth. A means of closing it is to ensure that mothers work earlier and more earlier and more. This has even more advantages: Employed women pay more taxes and more contributions for health and pension funds. The economy and welfare state therefore benefit from employed mothers.

Studies show that countries in which comparatively few women work have a lower innovative strength. An investigation by McKinsey, for example, comes to the conclusion that a doubling of the women’s shares in tech professions from today 22 percent to up to 45 percent in 2027 in the EU would increase the European gross domestic product by EUR 260 to 600 billion.

And a third point is neglected in the discussion: the birth rate in the country is already falling. Because well -trained women have less desire to forego financial security in favor of children. Means: You know how difficult it is to reconcile children and work and therefore prefer not to get children. Only if there are fewer young people soon is bad news for the economy and the social system. It just means that the state has to create incentives to get children. It is in his interest that well -trained women can reconcile family and work. So far, the parental allowance has been a good building block. Reliable and good childcare would be different.

Taken together, this means that the parental allowance is a very successful measure and not just « nice to have ».