Marry if you like: you're on your own

LABOUR'S Supporting Families — a Conultative Document Lc the M word — a breakthrough from which it quickly retreats. Testimony to the growing recognition of the disastrous decline and disintegration of family life, it is a fine example of the way in which "family values" is a slogan without content, committing no-LWIe to anything, least of all a serious agenda to restore marriage. It speaks for itself when it says that '`family policy has often suffered from an excess of rhetoric and a lack of practical action".
While maintaining that government can make a difference—"strengthening marriage and reducing the risks of family breakdown"--it falls back on the fatalistic excuse for inaction that "families are, and always will be, mainly shaped by private choices well beyond the influence of government". While the Prime Minister might have told the Labour Party Conference that `'every area of this Government's policy will be scrutinised to see how it affects family life, every policy examined, every initiative tested, every avenue explored to see how we can strengthen families", it is now seen to be a "misguided view that there are large levers that governments can pull to affect how families behave".
So we most forget that government makes laws that shape what it means to be married and how tax and benefit policy is in the government's control, as much as we must accept that decisions involving marriage, divorce and children are quite outside the incentives structure. We must forget that the economic, legal and social supports of marriage have been demolished with astonishing speed and thoroughness in recent decades.
Pulling the levers: 1
lAarriage has to he of use and benefit to people if it is going to be more than just a nice idea. The gains expected from that state arise much from interdependence, mutual support, collaboration, specialisation and a flexible division of labour, or sharing of child rearing tasks. In this way, a couple can accomplish more between themselves than they might on their own. However, such uses of marriage that give the twoparent family much of its point, particularly when it comes to the rearing of children at home, are not tolerable to the present government and are clearly to be thwarted.
In Supporting Families, calls to "strengthen marriage" are the bizarre preface to a policy designed for lone parenthood. For those on means tested support. there are going to be credits of up to £70 per week for one child, and up to £105 for two. when children go into day care. These will only be available to couples who both work over 16 hours each, with nothing when children are looked after at home. Couples are doubly penalised. Whether one wage or two, the coming Working Families Tax Credit, like the present Family Credit. is a top-up based on overall
income. It is the same for one or two people. with no allowance for a second adult. The couple have a far lower living standard than if they operated as singles, or one that is at lest a third less than that of a comparable lone parent. Thus, while the two parent family shares parental responsibility without acknowledgement of their costs, one parent will get as much as a couple by going solo, with state finided child care rearing the children. Marriage is superfluous, and the second parent a liability.
As the WFICC is going to extend far higher up the income scale than Family Credit, the pressures to stay unmarried, split up or keep relationships
"off the books" will be ratcheted up. However. while assuring us that marriage is "the surest foundation for raising children", Supporting Families affirms all those "strong ... families and relationships outside marriage" and how "lone parents bring up their children successfully with little or no help from the other parent". Why pay the price of marriage, if government is saying that children can be brought up just as successfully outside?
Married couple families, particularly those with one main earner. are also in for a harder squeeze outside the means-tested system. Much is made of the proposed increase in Child Benefit of £2.50 per week, but it will be paid for from a rise in tax on couples with as well as without children. Since the remaining cash value of the Married Couples Allowance will be reduced from £5.48 to £3.75, what families will get is 77p per week. This '7'7p should be offset against the loss of nearly £7 a week at the basic rate of tax, and over £14 per week at the higher tax rate, that families have lost from the withdrawal of the Married Couple's allowance over the 1990s, plus the losses they will incur in the future as it is completely swept away. Moreover, it is now proposed to tax the "increased" Child Benefit back from higher rate taxpayers at 40 per cent. This means that the sole or main earner for a family of four with one gross income of say £32,000 per year, will pay more income tax than a single, childless man, although the family's living standard will be under half that of a bachelor's on the same wage. (Singles already pay 25 per cent less Council tax.) In turn. a double income couple may earn, for example, £60,000 between them without being affected.
As men less able to support families, more mothers will be forced into the workplace, for longer and longer hours, regardless of their wishes, when a majority of working mothers with children already wish to work shorter hours or none at all. While fewer marriages will form, and more break in the face of this pressure, the Government sees the engineered economic decline of the family as "enhancing
financial independence. especially in women", and giving women "choices" as long as, of course. they choose to work. Supporting Families admits that "work also takes up time which could otherwise be committed to the family" and how many "families find it hard to strike a balance, and may are suffering from intense pressures", but the Government is coming to the rescue with the National Childcare Strategy!
F WE REALLY WANT to 'belp
more marriages succeed" and support family life, we ust take a hard look at what incentives these require. and what incentives or disincentives are now in place. A prime need is reforrn of the tax structure to reverse recent trends that favour individuals over families, frustrate co-operation and penalise those who accept responsibility for others. The care and support of children must be recognised when performed in the context of the two-parent family and by the parents themselves.
However, over the last 20 years or. so, governments have pulled a very large lever which has dumped the tax burden onto families In the 1950s a family with one income and two young children did not pay tax until their income exceeded an average manual workers earnings, while a single person paid at 49 per cent. In the mid 1960s, a single earner married couple on average male earnings with two young children paid 9 per cent of their income as tax and NI contributions; now it is more than double, at 21 per cent, while it has risen by less than a fifth for a single person. A 10 per cent band of tax will make matters worse, where most of the relief will go to those without dependents, as couples' allowances are completely abolished.
If so much had not been taken away in the first place, there would not be so many families qualifying as needy. While the immense bill for means-tested benefits climbs inexorably it fails to make inroads into the growing problems of child poverty. Means tested benefits simply create the poor that they maintain through work, wage and marital disincentives. Welfare dependency. hand in hand with family breakdown. owes much to a tax system that fails to recognise the extra costs which families bear, whatever their income level.
An equitable system would allow couples to keep money they reasonably need for child rearing. In other words, the comparative tax burdens on families and single, childless people. should reflect their ability to pay, which depends not only on the level of income, but how many people are dependent upon it. Parents should be allowed to spend as they judge best on their own or substitute care. and not be impoverished to subsidise outof-home care. Genuine freedom of choice when it comes to "balancing work and family life," means that it should be up to couples to decide how they allocate their employment. Most mothers want to look after their own children at home in the early years and then work part-time — an arrangement which provides the highest quality care. There should be recognition of mutual responsibility, and the equal status of husband and wife in a partnership where each shares in the income and expenses to the other. Men who are supporting homes and families are deserving of recognition and consideration for their efforts.
One way forward is to allow spouses to divide their combined income into two so that each part can take advantage of personal allowances and income tax bands. A one earner family with £20.000 would pay the same tax as two earners with £10,000 each; the one earner with £50,000 would pay as two with £25.000 ancl so forth. The number of tax-allowable, portions could be increased for each child. Mother way is to let spouses who do not earn enough to take full advantage of their basic tax allowance, to transfer the unused bit to the other. The personal allowances of nonearning children could also be transferable to parents. However, this system still somewhat favours the two earner compared to the oneearner couple. but it is vast improvement on the present system, where couples' incomes are summed where the Treasury wins, but not when the couple might gain.
An objection to family tax allowances is that the "rich" iipuld benefit; when all they • would receive is a basic level of income, free of tax, for the upkeep of themselves and their dependents. How the remaining balance is taxed, is another matter. In any case the "rich" gain most from cuts in the rate
of tax, regardless of whether or not they have children. It may be acceptable that a family with £80,000 per year pays more tax than one with £35,000. and one with £35.00. more than a family with £15,000. However, is it acceptable to tax a family the same or harder than a single, childless person, whether they each start with £80,000, £40,000 or £10,000? If it is not, then we also need a fairer distribution of the local tax burden. Abolishing the 25 per cent council discount for single householders would also reduce the pressures on land for more housing and on services that people might otherwise provide for each other if they were not increasingly encouraged to live alone.
Most systems of effective modern family support have evolved to include both tax exemptions and some sort of family allowance. It would simplify the bludgeoning system of means-tested benefits and reduce all manner of disincentives if
the childrelated portions of Income Support and Family Credit were amalgamated with Child Benefit.This would produce a fully integrated family allowance set at the same rate whether or not the parents were in work. It could also replace all the complexities of Family Credit. or Earned Income Tax Credit for lower earners, along with its Child Care credits. Set at a higher level than present Child Benefit. it could be reduced when families move through the middle-income ranges —subject again to the principle of income-splitting.
Pulling the levers: 2
The rules for ending marriages affect the rules for contracting marriages. The returns to marriage have also declined as the costs of divorce have cImpped.The state has already effectively abolished marriage. since people are unable to make a lifelong commitment to each other. When the Family Law Act comes into being in 2000, one spouse will not even have to formally give a reason for ditching the other. Unilateral, no-fault divorce has redefined marriage as a contingent, timelimited arrangement, where the state's role has changed from protecting marriage to facili tating divorce and helping the party who wants out. Power has been moved from the one who wants to stay married to the one who wants to divorce. Not only need the instigators of divorce incur little or no loss, they can benefit. This has created powerful disincentives against investing in the partnership. Will the government's "clear and simple" guide for people planning to many tell them that marriage is such a "serious business" that it is less binding than a job contract? While it is less arid less possible for an employer to terminate a person's employment for an arbitrary or unfair reason, a spouse can be dismissed, and on no grounds whatsoever. Even provisions inserted into the Family Law Act enabling conduct to be considered in the disposal of assets are to be overridden, removing any break on capricious or wilful behaviour.
The question is why the state continues to issue wedding licences for the saying of vows that have been emptied of legal meaning. Supporting Families proposes letting couples make written agreements which will specify how their assets are to be split up in the case of a divorce (if they are childless). However. this is not the same as being able to make agreements contingent on how the marriage ends — which might give people more security and control over the terms of their marriage.
Instead. there will be "enhanced" registry office weddings, baby naming ceremonies and more time for marriage plans, secular rites of passage, or ritual with God taken out. This wallpaper is supposed to hold up when the foundations have been removed.
People are trying to do something when they marry. but they cannot create marriage alone. At the centre is a vow whereby two people pledge to transfonn transient emotions into a higher. more durable and external reality. Society has to choose to make marriage and now it needs to recreate it.
The first step is to give couples the right to make a binding contract. Those contemplating breaking up a marriage need to be faced with the costs, in order to safeguard the other spouse. society and, in many cases, to protect them from their own short-sighted opportunism.
While purporting to wish to strengthen marriage, Suvorting Families in fact reftses to treat it as a special irstitution.Instead, the state will close in on the remaining distinctions between the legal consegtences of marrying and living together. More or the
rights of marriage are to go to tho2 who do not wait its responsitilities — this tine by automatcally giving any un married parent who appears ert the birth re:ister the same status as a maTied father. Such atte mpts at unclerwliting the validty of
all "lifestyle choices'. are likely to lad to further erosion of rnarrige.
There is a naive lend around that distributing more widely the legal benefts of being married is a vvy to encourage comrnitmen and caring among the untnaried. This tends to go hand inland with the notion that we c1 not need marriage itself for hadrearing. since all reamer of other relations can perfort the same function if we justtreat them right.
But men do not makevery dependable fathers outsiie of marriage. and cohabiting loth en who do not marry theipartners are apt to join the suing tide of unwed lone moths's. If they behaved otherwise the government would n be
producing docurnentsiike Supporting Families. Ether marriage is distinct, out is nothing.
The danger is that, hung made pro-marriage noses, without giving prac c al support, the Governmenwill disadvantage families friier as it tries to placate the ritifamily forces it has offered.