The single allowance is not a brake on women’s employment, but an instrument that must be strengthened and made truly universal. This is the position of the president of the National Forum of Family Associations, Adriano Bordignon, who responds to the recent declarations of the INPS president, Gabriele Fava, according to which, in some cases, the measure could affect mothers’ work choices.
President Bordignon, you maintain that the real limit of the single allowance is its link with the ISEE. Concretely, how should it be reformed to become truly universal without losing equity towards families with lower incomes?
«The main limit of the single allowance is precisely the connection to the ISEE, which produces distorting effects denounced by the Forum since its introduction. In some situations, in fact, an increase in income from work determines a reduction in benefits, creating mechanisms that end up penalizing the very families they would like to support. For this reason we ask that the single allowance be progressively released from the ISEE. It is not a welfare measure against poverty, but a structural policy for the birth rate and for the recognition of the social value of children. Continuing to read it with a welfare logic means devaluing its function.”
The INPS president hypothesized that, in some cases, the single allowance could affect mothers’ work choices. What data or experiences lead you to exclude this risk and instead identify other causes of the decline in female employment?
«We do not agree with the conclusions of the INPS president Gabriele Fava because they risk identifying a problem in the single allowance which, in reality, arises from very different choices. Attributing to this measure a disincentive effect on female work means shifting attention away from the real critical issues of the system. The single allowance, in itself, does not discourage women’s work. The debate should instead focus on the real causes that slow down female employment: wages that are too low, insufficient childcare services, job insecurity for women and a reconciliation between family and work that is still largely inadequate. It’s not the single allowance that keeps women away from the job market.”
If the single allowance is a birth rate policy and not a welfare measure, what other interventions do you think are essential to allow families to have the children they want and women to reconcile work and motherhood?
«The single allowance alone cannot solve the problem of the birth rate decline even if adapting it, arranging the equivalence scales and bringing full benefit up to the child’s 25th birthday would be a step forward. Indeed, it would be useful to enhance the reward system in the case of working mothers. However, it is not enough.
Single allowance must be accompanied by policies that eliminate the concrete obstacles that currently weigh on families. We need more widespread educational and childcare services, stable and adequately paid work, effective tools for reconciling life and work time and structural support for parenting. It is on these issues that the country should open a serious and bipartisan discussion.”
A few years after the introduction of the single allowance, what assessment does the Forum make? What results do you consider positive and what corrections do you most urgently request from the Government to make it a more effective tool to support families?
«The single allowance represents one of the few structural tools to support families introduced in recent years and constitutes an important basis on which to build a true family policy. However, precisely for this reason, it should not be undermined or accused. The priority is to correct its limits, starting from the link with the ISEE, which compromises its universality. With a positive resolution of the European infringement procedure dispute, we expect a season of significant new investments. The birth rate decline and the decline in female employment cannot be fought by weakening this measure, but by making it truly universal and combining it with policies capable of concretely supporting families and enhancing the role of children as a social good.”
