In an article published by the
Sunday Times this weekend, demographer Dr Paul Morland puts forward some suggestions for “incentivising families to have more children and to have them when they are younger”.
“Introduce a ‘negative child benefit’ tax for those who do not have offspring,” he says. “This may seem unfair on those who can’t or won’t have children, but it recognises that we all rely on there being a next generation and that everyone should contribute to the cost of creating that generation.”
He then suggests the UK could “use the funds to fix the UK’s broken, expensive early-years care system”.
Lucky you, if you want to have children but can’t – you can simply pay for everyone else’s instead. Never mind the fact that you may want to save up for fertility treatment, which already costs upwards of £5,000 per cycle and is
quietly being removed from NHS provision.