Saturday, August 11

Subsidized child care is a proven way to increase birth rate

But Canada, except for Quebec, balks at it, despite looming demographic crisis

Last month's census data confirmed several long-standing and problematic trends: a lower-than-ever birth rate, a higher-than-ever median age of nearly 40, with the West younger than the East mainly because Easterners have moved West to work in the oil boom.

Canada has always had the option of trying to encourage a higher birth rate to maintain its population, yet only Quebec has gone down that road.

Canada by and large does not provide inexpensive or accessible child care. Canadian parents, excluding Quebecers, pay on average twice as much for child care as Europeans. Barely one in five single Canadian parents has access to subsidized care.

Despite the fact that Quebec's system of generous state support for parents has proved successful in raising its birth rate, other provinces and the federal government have all pointedly - and wrongly - ignored it as an example to follow.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If Canada want to increase its birth rate, higher taxes to subsidize child care is not the way. Just look at Alberta where taxes are the lowest in the country and there is a baby boom. Let people keep their own money instead of government coming in and sucking everyone dry and people will have children

The Frog Queen said...

I certainly have a big concern about having children lately. I'm engaged and we wanna have kids but we're totally scared there's no way we can afford to. Money is a big issue in having kids and yes, I believe it's a large contributor to Canada's low birth rate.