FAMILY SOCIAL POLICY HOMEWORK
QUESTIONS 1-4

1. The birth rate is the number of live birth per thousand per year whereas the fertility rate is the average number of children a women has in a lifetime. The main difference here is the birth rate is the total amount of babies per year but the fertility rate is the average amount of babies a women has per lifetime.

2. The number of children born into unmarried couples has multiplied by nearly five as a result of the increase in co habiting couples. Due to more couples wanting to trial their marriage before actually committing to one they co habit; because of this less people are marrying but continue to have children. Furthermore the more this happens the more children of unmarried couples will be born. Another reason that this is happening is because of how expensive marriage is nowadays. People do not marry as a result of this; therefore there is an increase of children without married parents.

3. One reason for the death rate declining is because we have came out if war therefor there is going to be fewer deaths. Also our health care has improved extravagantly, giving the treatments for fatal diseases or accidents more of chance of keeping the patient alive.

4. A lot of the social policies created by the party in power affect the family and its life. In item 1B it states that the One Child Policy in China offers couples incentives to limit their family size, such as lower taxes and preferential treatment in housing and education. Since the One Child Policy was introduced in 1979, the fertility rate reduced from 4.7 to 1.6. Families were given the opportunity to have more than one child but there would be a large increase in tax for the families with more than one child to stop this from happening. The policy ended recently in 2013. As a result of families only having one child, Chine became over populated with singe men, as families would abort babies that were female as males were preferred. Also as a result of the one child policy, china’s workforce reduced by an average of approximately three million a year. The one child policy had a massive affect on the family size and family life as the family was no where near as big as it used to be before the 1980’s, it also created more families to be patriarchal as there was less female babies being born.

The conservatives have introduced multiple rules since the time they have been in power. One of which is called the ‘marriage tax allowance’. In Item 1B it says that the state sometimes encourages couple to have more children or even get married for that matter, especially Islamic and catholic countries. The marriage tax allowance was introduced in favor of this matter. David Cameron, The Priminister, brought this rule into power to try and get couples who were co habiting or together to marry. To enforce this he gave an allowance to married couples of £150-£200 tax cut. Cameron said, “Marriage acts as a stabilizer and a signal. Married couple are far less likely to break up than couples who live together without getting married, so they should be rewarded through the tax system”. This policy has not yet been administrated as the Liberal Democrats oppose it. This will have an impact on the family life as more who where co habiting would marry as there would be a tax cut. This would especially be the case in the lower and middle classes. Although some say that the cost of a marriage is so much more than the tax cut being given so there really is not much point. But Cameron said that once this rule is imposed, then the tax cut would begin to get bigger so it is more worth getting married for the tax cut.

A rule that has brought in by the conservatives to make families living in council houses have more children is the Bedroom tax. This policy is that if the council house has more bedrooms then it does occupants; their housing benefit will be cut. If there is one bedroom not in use, there will be a cut of