Helping parents help children
Parents have their own unique approaches to raising children. They make different choices about how many books to buy their offspring, for example, or how much time to spend reading to them, if at all. As a result, not all young people have the same 'head start' that could help them succeed later in life. To help solve this problem, the EU-funded project MPIC ('Motivating Parents to Invest in Children') has made public policy recommendations on how governments could use fiscal measures, such as taxes and social security benefits, as incentives for parents to support their children's education. The study was undertaken by Marie Curie fellow Hakki Yazici, an assistant professor of Economics at Turkey's Sabanci University. "Government does not have a direct control over the level of investment children receive at home," explains Yazici, "but it can use carrots and sticks to encourage socially efficient levels of parental contribution." According to the researcher, the results of the project show that social security systems and taxation of private savings could be used effectively to provide the needed incentives. "In an optimal system, parents' social security benefits should be positively correlated with their children's adult outcomes," he explains. In other words, if your children are successful in their later life, e.g. if they have high salaries, you get a better pension. This would constitute an indirect subsidy for parents who put more into their progenies. Current pension systems, where benefits are independent of children's income, might be harmful, and hence, reforms might be needed, Yazici adds. He believes that the practical recommendations that came out of his study could be quite far-reaching. "The project proposes significant changes in the way we design fiscal policy, which would essentially affect all the citizens in a given country," he says. "It reforms traditional fiscal policy tools and motivates parents to invest more in their offspring's intellectual development. This would benefit many of today's children, that is, the next generation adults." Yazici, says the EU funding he received was vital: "Being a Marie Curie fellow has been a valuable experience for me. The grant helped me at all stages of my research. It covered my travel expenses, allowing me to attend conferences all over the world and expand my network of contacts, and it covered article publication costs." MPIC, completed in August 2013, received funding of EUR 75 000, in line with the EU's strategy to tackle social exclusion and poverty through measures such as family support and benefits, quality childcare and early-childhood education. For more information, please visit: Project factsheet http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/96157_en.html Sabanci University http://www.sabanciuniv.edu/en EU Platform for Investing in Children http://europa.eu/epic/about/index_en.htm
Countries
Türkiye
